Harry and Alice
by mongodatroll
Summary: The mirror of Erised was keeping more trapped in it than a red rock, but Lilly's protection cut a deal with it during the battle with Quirrelmort. Now Alice is out, has vowed to assist Harry until he no longer needs her, and has spent nearly a hundred years in the magical world, looking out from her prison and finding ways to make all of her tricks work for real.
1. Chapter 1

Do I? Do I really need to point out that I don't actually own any of this? I guess I do, because I forgot and low and behold was reminded of it.

Feel free to comment as you see fit, but know that I am petty enough to just delete anything that is just rude and offers no insight. I don't get those often, but when I do they get the boot.

Chapter 1

Vows

Thus it came to pass that one Harry Potter found himself fallen upon stone steps, fire at his back and an incensed dark lord Voldemort closing the distance to ensure that his next attack would be Harry's last. When inexplicably, Harry glanced behind Voldemort. Looked for a moment at the Mirror of Erised, which he had spent long hours peering into the depths of earlier in the year. He wasn't sure why he looked. Maybe he was hoping to see his parents one last time before he died. Maybe he wanted to give them a fingertip wave as his death came for him. Maybe he simply wanted to see someone that loved him, even if it was manufactured, before the end.

The last thing he expected was what he actually got.

The reflection the mirror gave him does not include himself, or the possessed Professor Quirrell. It contains nobody and nothing of which he is familiar. Instead there is a throne room. A red carpet of the finest velvet leads to a golden throne, past marble columns and what appears to be a royal guard comprised of man size playing cards with arms, legs, and heads. The throne has a young girl sitting upon it. Long, straight dark hair and eyes widened with surprise. She wears a blue dress with a blood splattered white pinafore worn over the top. The white and black horizontally striped socks slip beneath black leather boots that have many buckles leading nearly to her knees. Her head tilts to one side as she begins walking towards the mirror from the inside of the glass, her head still cocked in wonder and she begins to speak. As she does, Voldemort turns to face this possible new threat, though backing off enough to keep Potter in his sights.

"Curiouser and curiouser." She says, as she reaches the glass, and wipes her hand upon the inside. "In the interminable lengths of time I have been trapped in this wretched thing, I never would have believed that my release would force a vow, much less one that was magically binding."

Harry uses the confusion as both he and Voldemort consider what has been said to get back to his feet, his eyes never leaving the mirror as he does so. "My name is Harry Potter. Who are you?" As he asks, he backs slowly away from his adversary and with two steps, stands over his fallen wand, though he does not dare try to pick it up with Quirrelmort in the room.

"My name is Alice Liddell, and I thank you for asking. It has been so long since I had need of my last name I had nearly forgotten what it was." She turns to face Harry more directly, as Voldemort takes the time to cast some kind of magical investigative spell, while still keeping an eye on Potter. "It was you, was it not, who looked into this mirror and wished for help, life, and an end to being the only one upon whom you can truly rely?"

Harry thinks about this. It is probably true, he suspects. He expected to see his parents, because that was what he had seen before. But it wasn't what he was wishing for, as he had known that they would be unable to help him. "I guess so. I mean, not in so many words, but it was definitely on my mind."

She gives him the slightest of smirks, and then her face goes back to being largely expressionless. "I see. So, less a plan and more a desperate plea then? Very well. I do hope we can manage to get along, because an open ended arrangement like that in the magical world is like to ruffle us quite thoroughly if we cannot."

At this point, Quirrelmort speaks up. "Young Alice. If you would halt this course that would require I kill you, I would be willing to use all of my not inconsiderable power to free you under circumstances that would favor you rather than put you in the position for which you are currently destined. Chattel slavery would almost have to be less preferable to simply owing me a favor, would it not?"

Alice regards him coldly. "You are either a child murderer or a perfectly paranoid pedophile who is perturbed by Potter's purloined posterior. You are literally two faced, and one of them appears to be some sort of reptile. Not since the apple and the snake has there been anything in reality or fiction that I would be less likely to trust my freedom to. There are worse things than being bound to another, and it seems likely to me that being in your debt is one of them." She turns to Harry, pulling out from behind her back a butchers knife. A full sized butchers knife, that against her twelve year old frame appears to be over half the length of her arm. It is covered in intricate runes, and seems to hum with a barely restrained thirst. She holds the blade in her right hand, and pressing the blade against her left makes the slightest cut, which bleeds horribly, the red staining her forearm as she makes a fist and holds her hand over her head. "I accept the terms to end my incarceration. I shall make the problems of this one my own, and I shall keep him safe and healthy as long as he will have me, and this bond shall only be able to be broken by one Harry Potter!" With that, she smears her blood across the glass and then taps it with the blade of her knife, causing it to shatter into the room.

From the point that she had started her vow, Voldemort had given up his attempts to use magic to stall the situation so he could deal with Potter and then make some kind of deal with the mirrors denizen. He began casting blasting curses of all kinds instead, endeavoring to destroy the mirror altogether and thereby end the confrontation. While damage is being done, the resilience of the ancient artifact is strong and it holds out until the glass shatters. At that point a lot of things happen very quickly.

Harry reaches down to get his wand, and once he has it dives to the only cover he can see, the shattered remains of the mirror frame. Voldemort screams "Avada Kedavra!" The green blob of death energy misses Alice by inches as she ducks, throws her knife at his wand hand, and reaching behind herself to pull out a black and purple jeweled decanter full of some kind of liquid that glows a faint red. She tips it down her throat as the knife removes Quirrell's fingers from his right hand, his wand bouncing down the steps as her knife reappears in her hand just in time for a change to take place.

Harry's eyes widen in shock as Alice becomes something else. Curled and twisted rams horns creep out of her skull as her skin turns a dull red, with her hands dripping blood as they twist into vicious claws.

Then, using her knife and claws, she pounces on the wounded and shattered dark lord and tears him to pieces while letting out a powerful roar of rage and hate directed at this miserable swine that had the nerve to attempt to kill her with a spell. The black smoke of Voldemort's essence swirls around her, abandoning professor Quirrell and attempting for a moment to gain some kind of purchase on her, but when he attempts to invade her mind he is met by a legion of card shaped guards. They chop at him wickedly with halberds and axes, damaging him until with a screeching cry of pain he leaves. A cloud of hate and suffering that is soon gone leaving Harry and Alice alone in the room.

With that done, she collects her bottle from where it had fallen and sits upon the steps, breathing heavily as she concentrates in an effort to end the change. Using magic unique to herself, she burns the remainder of the potion from her system, causing an uncomfortable but necessary change back to human. Once she is once again normal and the only sound in the room is the slow trickle of Quirrell's blood down the stairs, she looks up at Harry. "You can come out now, you know. It is over."

Harry Looks at her dubiously. "I can see that. What was that you did?"

Alice looks at him as he stands and starts walking over. "That was a potion of sorts. When a bit younger physically than I am now, I spent a lot of time in my mind attempting to create order from chaos, as my mind, such as it was, was not a healthy place then. When I reached my twelfth year and became locked up in that thrice damned mirror, I had nothing to do for many, many years but to order my mind and peer out into the world to which I no longer belonged. That mirror tended to be owned by powerful, and magical people. Moreover, it spent many of those years in the locked closet between two classrooms, where I had nothing to do but listen. So I have tried to find ways to make the things in my mind a reality when I ever managed to secure my freedom. To pass the time, you see. Honestly I thought I would never be free but something changed a few months ago. Someone changed the way the magic of the mirror worked in such a way that things could be removed if certain circumstances were met. Once the precedent was set, I think it was some form of protection on yourself that worded the oath I would need to make to be free. Powerful, at least semi-intelligent magic. It lays upon you like a dew. A light mist. Just above your skin. I don't know the origin of it Harry, but I would wager that someone sacrificed a lot to give it to you. Perhaps everything. Magic that strong and long lasting carries a price, generally speaking."

Harry considers her words. That would make a certain amount of sense, if his mother or father had cast some form of protection on him and then died for it. That would definitely be the sacrifice needed.

"I think it must have been my parents. They died when I was very young, protecting me."

Alice looks at him, as though seeing him for the first time. "So you are an orphan then? So am I. My family, save myself, died in a fire when I was quite younger than you are now. The shock saw me committed for a couple of years, then I was placed in an orphanage full of the most disagreeable people. A year later, no more, the mirror capitalized on my mental state and offered me what it didn't possess. Instead inflicting yet more madness that it took me years to beat and then imprisoned me for decades more. Do you understand the nature of the agreement that we have entered?"

Harry looks down at his feet, his hand fiddling with his wand as he considers his reply. "Umm... I think so. It sounds like you are basically going to be looking after me as best as you can until I say you don't have to anymore. Do you want me to do that? Because I will, I don't like the idea of keeping someone like that. It's wrong."

Alice looks at him with a new respect. "Well, normally I would say that you were right. It would be very wrong to do this to someone. But in my case if I am honest, it may be no bad thing to have a purpose for a time. I have lacked any for so very long. Let us say that we leave the topic open to be revisited, but not concern ourselves with it for now. Besides, an unbreakable vow may be needed to curb some of my more esoteric tendencies. At least until I feel that my feet are once again firmly planted on the ground. I have been committed, after all, and was under the care of a head doctor when the mirror captured me. The next question of course becomes, do you wish others to know of our agreement, or would you prefer it to be hidden?"

Harry thinks about this for a minute. "Maybe hidden for now? If we can? It is almost the end of the school year, if we can hide you until then, we can try to figure something out over the summer. Maybe you could enroll in school here next year. I can pay for it, my trust vault should have enough for that."

Alice looks at him, her lips quirked into a very slight smile. "Very well then. If you wish me to remain hidden until summer, there is only one thing to do." With that, she reaches behind herself and pulls from a compartment in the shape of a skull that rests over the knot of her pinafore, a small purple bottle. She uncorks it it and downs the contents in a single gulp. Before she has even put the bottle away, she is becoming smaller. Tinier and tinier. Her clothes shrinking with her. When she is merely two inches tall, she concentrates for a moment, burning the potion out of her blood, and then turns to Harry, climbing up him as he gapes at her in awe until she is resting on his shoulder, under his robe. Her voice has become much higher, but she is still understandable as she talks to him. "I will stay this size until I take the counter agent. So I will eat next to nothing and should be able to keep out of sight. Just be careful with me, I am quite fragile like this after all."

Harry shakes his head. "Yes, of course. In case I had forgotten to mention it, thank you. Thank you very much."

"Not at all. I have been fighting psychotic despots so long I had feared becoming one. It is I that should be thanking you. Time spent as a prisoner of ones own whims will sadly be my legacy if I cannot find another path."

With that, Harry lay down to make himself as comfortable as possible. Unsure if he would be able to get back through the fire at the doorway, He and Alice murmur a soft conversation for awhile before he drifts off to sleep. Discussing his family, such as they are. His classes, and his friends. The circumstances that led to this battle, and the significance of the red rock in his pocket. Unbeknownst to him, a rock that is collected by Alice and shrunk to fit in her pouch once he is sleeping.

A windfall like that cannot be left to others, she decides with certainty.

Waking up in the hospital wing, he looks around, and panics a bit as he sees that his robe is sitting on the chair next to his bed. At least, until he realizes that Alice is curled up against his neck, just under the blanket and seemingly asleep. Some time later, he gets a visitor in the form of Hermione Granger, the bushy haired genius of his trio of school chums, and the conversation is a little disturbing.

"Harry, what happened? Professor Dumbledore brought you back to the infirmary, but he looked shocked, as though he didn't know what he had seen, but knew that it was not good."

Making a quick decision, and glancing around to ensure that they were still alone, Harry responds.

"It wasn't Snape, Hermione. It was Quirrell, and he had Voldemort's face sticking out the back of his head. Must have been why he wore that ridiculous turban all the time. They wanted the philosophers stone to bring him back. They would have gotten it to, and killed me, except that I had some help."

Hermione looks relieved. "Of course you had help. We weren't going to let you do it alone, now were we? I am going to go check on Ron, he is over in the far corner. Take care, I'll be back soon!"

As she walks away, Harry starts to mumble that her and Ron's help wasn't really what he meant, but stops, considers, and goes back to sleep instead as he barely hears a slight giggle from very near his ear.

The headmaster, one Albus Dumbledore, calls Harry into his office the day after he met Alice. As Harry approaches the Gargoyle at the base of the stairs to the headmasters office, he tries to explain the headmaster to Alice.

"So... Dumbledore is this really old and very powerful wizard who runs this school as well as having various political titles throughout the magical world. He is pretty close to universally respected for having dealt with Grindlewald during the second world war."

He can feel Alice stir against his chest, where she has made her home in an inner pocket of his robe.

"So, then. A political creature with a lot of power, personal and otherwise, and a fascination for children. I think I have heard people discussing him in the past Harry, and you should know that these discussions were not always complimentary to the man. I once spent six years in the antechamber of a family that considered Dumbledore the "Leader of the light-headed" and that it was only the blind worship of the man that kept him from prison. But more than that, you should know that I have heard from multiple sources that he is a master of Legilimency."

Harry glances down, looking at his chest even though there is no way she can see him. "What does that mean? What is Legilimency?

Alice wiggles again, having gotten out her knife and made a small vertical cut in his robe, so she can see out the front as though peering through blinds. "It means that without even trying, if he can lock eyes with you he can invade your mind. Don't meet his eyes if you can help it. In fact, it is likely he is calling you into his office so he can do so without witnesses. If you feel he is going that route, do something with your hands in front of my pocket, then move them away quickly. We will discover what he thinks of trespassing on my thoughts instead."

Harry looks confused. "How would that help? You know as much or more about the situation between the two of us as I do."

Alice gives a little giggle. "Yes, but Harry, you are not insane. Moreover, you have not spent nearly a hundred years with nothing better to do than to conquer your own mind. I would be willing to believe that should he attempt such a thing with me, even were he willing to use the spell in earnest, rather than passively, he would find it to be quite the mistake.

With that, they reached the gargoyle, who moves gracefully to the side after hearing "Jelly Belly." Once at the top of the stairs, the door opens before Harry can even knock upon it, and Dumbledore speaks.

"Harry, my boy! Good to see you up and about! Now, I have to ask you a few questions about your experiences last night."

Looking about the room, really making it a point to look anywhere other than at the headmaster, Harry sees Professor Snape. The unbelievably cruel and biased potions master is sitting in a chair against the far wall in front of a shelf full of the oddest little contraptions. "Why is Professor Snape here? If I may ask?"

Dumbledore looks somewhat askance, though his eyes continue to twinkle in a grandfatherly fashion, and his smile, though a tad strained for a moment, is never in fear of failing. "Why Harry, he was just visiting with me. It isn't as though I knew exactly when you would be arriving. Now have a seat here. Would you like a lemon drop?"

Harry waits a few seconds. Then when it is obvious that the headmaster is not going to be doing anything further, He hears a slight murmur from his pocket. "Despicable, that two grown men in positions of authority feel the need to outnumber and intimidate a young boy. Play the game their way, Harry, and you can do naught but lose. But know that despite what they would have you believe, it is actually you that holds all the game pieces. The fact that he is speaking to you rather than the bobbies is proof enough of that."

Harry starts backing towards the door. "I do apologize, Headmaster. But I have nothing to say about yesterday that I wish to do in front of an audience. Perhaps another time."

As he swings the door shut behind himself, he can hear an indignant snort and derisive tones from Snape, and the look he gets from the headmaster is sheer astonishment.

As he descends the staircase back to the hall, he can hear again from his pocket the giggle of Alice. "Power plays. By their nature they tend to crumble when forced into the harsh light of civilization. Indeed, it is worth noting that anytime someone tries to use authority to put you in a bad position, particularly if they are attempting to look honorable doing it, adding more and various authority is never a bad plan. Schemes intended for small little cabals tend to fall apart when one introduces them to game players that are not part of the current retinue."

Harry considers that while he is slowly walking back down the corridor to his dormitory in Gryffindor house. "So, anytime I have to talk to him I should bring along somebody then. Suggestions?"

By her tone, Harry can almost see the little smirk dancing about her lips. "Someone you trust, someone that has enough personal power to not to take too much of his crap, and somebody that you can be at least reasonably assured does not already belong to him. For most of these children, that would be a parent or guardian. Sadly, for you I am guessing it will need to be one of the professors. Is there one that you trust that isn't already in Dumbledore's pocket, so to speak?"

Harry considers that for a minute. "My first thought would be my transfiguration professor, McGonagall. She doubles as my head of house. But she is the deputy headmistress. So I am not certain I can trust her with this. Besides, she has a disturbing habit of not believing me when I tell her things or attempting to get justice for slights from students or staff anyway. The rest of the Professors unfortunately are either unknowns for something like this or hostile."

Alice considers for a moment. "Well, if you can't get assistance through bonds of friendship, the kind of friend we need for this can likely be purchased. Have you the money to acquire a solicitor? At worst they can tell you what your options are. At best, it is probable that the headmaster has abused his authority in more than a few ways if what we discussed yesterday was true."

"What do you mean?"

"Harry. I like you. Don't be a simpleton. You are famous in the magical world. That whole "Boy who lived" rubbish. What is the likelihood that in the last ten years, nobody has tried to reach you. Sent a letter to you. Wanted to wish you a happy birthday. I find the odds astronomically against, and the chances are quite good that the miserable old man hid you away with your relatives, either uncaring that they treated you poorly or expecting them too."

"Wait, hold up a second. Why do you think it was him? Couldn't it have been somebody else.

There is a moments pause. Then a light sigh. "Harry, I know you are intelligent. Think for a bit. Nobody could find you for ten long and monumentally ugly years. Then when somebody does it is a school owl that is controlled by Dumbledore, and Hagrid. Who, though your description paints him as a good caring man, is most definitely Dumbledore's creature. This malignant tumor of a human being knew where you were and is guilty of either neglect or malicious intent for putting you there where no one else could help you and then not bothering to check up on you."

Harry stops. Leans against the wall, thinking it though. "So. What are you suggesting then? If he really wants to get me alone, there isn't a lot I can do to stop him. He is the Headmaster, after all."

There is silence for a few seconds. "Well, it is only a week until the end of term. Ignoring a summons may cost you some house points, but really what else can he do? Send you home, where we can start to work out what to do next? If that happens we can call it a good thing and simply move on. Honestly, I recommend simply not leaving your dorm room save for classes and meals, and if they try to make you go anywhere else tell them you would like your guardians notified and to be sent home to start looking into other magical schools to attend next year. I am betting that will silence the man for a time."

Amazingly enough, the plan worked. Two days later when Dumbledore cornered him in the halls and Harry explained that if he continued to be tormented by staff he would find another school to attend, the man seemed too shocked to go on. Stammering something about how that would be unacceptable and backing away lest he bother the young man further.

The trip back on the Hogwarts express at the end of term was almost painful, as both Ron and Hermione could tell that there was something going on with Harry, but try as they might they could not get him to divulge what it was all about. Meeting the Dursleys at the station was it's own brand of hell, but then Harry had a suspicion that a lot of things were about to change, very quickly.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two.

And the hits just keep on coming.

Discovering that the Dursleys were finally going to give him an actual bedroom was a bit of a shock. But sadly, being whipped with a belt when he rolled his eyes at the long list of chores he was supposed to do every day starting the next morning was not. Having feared that something like this might happen, Alice had spent the car ride home and the evening until Harry had a chance to finish up the dinner dishes and bring a few scraps to his new room sequestered in his school trunk. Snoozing in clean socks that had been placed inside a small wooden box he had found in the dorm room. Apparently at one point it had contained some Zonko's product. When he finally had a chance to go upstairs and let her out it was nearly eleven at night and both she and Hedwig, his beautiful white snow owl, were hungry, thirsty, and more than a little annoyed.

Saying not a word, he placed Alice on the bed next to a plate full of leftovers. Then fed and watered Hedwig, accepting her irritated nip with as much grace as he could muster and eyes that begged forgiveness. He left her cage open and raised the window so she would have free reign. When he is done and turns around, Alice is back to her normal size at just a couple of inches shorter than he is.

"Sorry for leaving you alone in there. This was the first I could get free. They had me working until it was time to make dinner, then the cleanup was pretty bad because they hadn't bothered to do any cleanup of their own for a few days I think. Probably wanted to make sure I knew my place when I got back."

"Harry, if what I could hear through the walls of the trunk is indicative of your life here, then your family is despicable and moreover, unlawful. You do understand that beating and working like a slave a child under their care is against the law, do you not?"

Harry looks at her. "Yeah, I know."

Alice looks confused. "Then why do you not tell anyone? There has to be a constable that could do something for you. The situation here cannot continue. I will not allow it to continue. To do so would be a direct violation of the oath I swore, not to mention a flagrant disregard for common decency."

Harry slumps to the floor, with his back leaning against the bed as he hears Alice nibbling at a roast beef sandwich and sipping the chocolate milk he provided. "I used to. When I was little. I would tell teachers sometimes where I had gotten the marks, when they asked. Or that I hadn't been fed in awhile, and that is why they could see my ribs. They always said they would do something, and then a few weeks later they would forget about me and things would go back to the way that they were. After awhile I just stopped bothering to try. It got too depressing when they decided I wasn't worth helping after all and quit."

Alice stops eating, and Harry can almost feel the look being directed at him. Three parts sympathy to four parts unbridled rage, somehow all hidden behind a slight frown. "Harry, the headmaster is more than a master of Legilimency. He is, I am quite sure, more than capable of casting a simple Obliviate, and these non-magical folk that you have been pleading to for help would have had no defense against it."

Harry turns to look at her. "What is Obliviate? I don't think we have covered that one yet."

Alice sets her glass down on the dresser. "It is called a memory charm. Mostly it is used to protect the statute of secrecy so non-wand wielders won't learn about the magical world." She gives a dark look to the floor. "They say magical world as though they are somehow living on a different planet. The very peak of arrogance. In any case, a master of the Obliviate charm can not only wipe someones memory of specific tidbits that they are not interested in dealing with, but they can nudge in a replacement memory that the victim of the charm will consider to have come from their own mind. Someone, probably the headmaster, has been making it a point to mess about with your life to the extent that they have been doing illegal memory tampering to see it done. The problem with this is that it means that you are under some form of scrutiny. You would have to be, or they would not know to respond to these things. If you want my advice, you should pack your things. We should be leaving at first light, and unless you like it here enough to stay for some indecipherable reason, we shan't be returning."

Harry looks a bit shocked. "Just leave? Where would I go? Where would we go, I mean? I have some money, but I don't know if I have enough to support both of us for six summers until I graduate and can get a job!"

"And why would only you be working? If I intend to eat from the table I should expect to be party to keeping the cupboards stocked, I should think. But beyond that, I don't yet know. I am uncertain where we would go. But we must come up with something as remaining here is simply unacceptable. If I hear that Vernon person bellowing at you again for no reason I am liable to be forced to act or fall prey to my vow. Honestly, I value my own life quite highly and his not at all. The decision would not be a difficult one."

Harry looks a little shocked at that. It hadn't occurred to him that her oath could result in such a solution. Then he nods his head. "Well, if that is what we are going to do, then I guess the first stop should be Gringotts, the wizard bank. We will need to find out what kind of budget I really have before we can make any kind of plans."

"A fair statement. We should also look into alternate schooling for you, at least. I will need to find a way to reinsert myself into the world at large before I will be able to do so myself. With the only records of my existence being nearly a century old, I expect that there will be problems."

Harry frowns. "Alternate schooling? That place is dangerous, I can't abandon my friends there. They need me."

Alice rolls her eyes. "They need you to tell them how vile the wizarding world and your relatives treat you. If they are true friends, they will not begrudge you removing yourself from a hostile and needlessly malevolent environment. If they are not true friends then their opinion on the matter is so much less than worthless, it is actually harmful."

Harry considers her words. He wants to agree with her, but he knows better. They are his friends, but Ron will not understand. He can already hear the spiteful bleating in his mind about how the best wizarding school in the world is obviously just not good enough for the stuck up Harry Potter. Hermione will nod, and understand, and put up a good front. But she will be hurt. She didn't have much in the way of friends before Harry and Ron beat down the troll that had come for her in the bathrooms, and to call Ron her friend, while not exactly inaccurate, might be taking some liberties with the word. After all he was the reason that she was hiding in the bathroom in the first place.

"They are my friends, Alice. But they are in no position to control their own lives and they are stuck there. If I left them, I would be abandoning my friends. I won't do that to them, any more than I would do it to you. We need to find a way to have the rights over my person stripped from the Dursleys and the headmaster, and then back it up with a solicitor."

Alice gives him an odd look. "So we are friends, then? Can't remember the last time I had one of those. You are quite certain that this is something you want?"

Harry returns her odd look for a moment, then it melts into a smile. "Alice, you are my friend. You have no choice in that. Whether or not you choose to be mine is unfortunately something I can't control, but I hope you do."

She stills for a minute. "I think it would be best were we to get to know each other better before such claims were made, Harry. I have no doubt of your sincerity. But I am not quite normal, and until you have had time to learn more of what makes me who I am, you should spend the time learning rather than setting standards of fondness and familiarity that you could later regret."

Harry, not being quite sure how to take that recommends that Alice shrink again if possible for sleeping purposes, his bed being a bit of a threadbare monster that occasionally throws a spring through the too small mattress when his inevitable nightmares make him move around too much.

The next morning is an early one for the two of them, as Harry packs everything that he cannot do without into his school trunk and with Alice's help manages to get it and Hedwig's cage both down to the street at just after five o'clock in the morning.

"I guess we will have to get to a bus station if we are going to the Leaky Cauldron. That is the entrance point to Diagone Alley, the wizard area of London. That's where Gringotts is. I think I have enough money to get us there and put us up for a few days, but we will need to hit the bank as soon as possible." Harry looks one way then the other as he speaks, trying to remember where the nearest bus stop is.

"The world has changed more than a bit since I last walked its streets, so I will leave the planning of these early stages to you. Though if the talk I heard in that antechamber is to be believed, there may be an easier way about this." Alice looks thoughtful. Then shrugs, as if making a decision. "Try standing on the edge of the road and holding your wand out, see what happens."

Harry does and within a few seconds, there is a crashing, screeching sound as a giant, double decker bus effectively appears in front of them and a rather slender and unassuming young man is stepping off of it, asking for money, destination, and any luggage they may have so he can stow it on board.

After passing over the money, and watching as the man struggles to load his overweight trunk, the ride begins. The ride, of course, being an insane, high speed fiasco wherein the bespectacled older gentleman who is driving the vehicle displays skill that the best rally car driver could only dream of in getting them to their destination at the speeds he does and through whatever traffic happens to be in the way. There isn't a lot of time to chat during the ride, but as they are dragging Harry's trunk into their room in the leaky cauldron the planning and plotting begins in earnest.

"So the bank should be open in a couple of hours. Do you want to stop by Madam Malkin's for some wizarding clothes on the way? It might help you to stand out less."

Alice raises an eyebrow. "And what, pray tell, is wrong with my manner of dress? Though I will admit that it would be nice to have something new and less soiled, I have no desire to change my style unless I have no choice. School uniforms, for example, and we do not yet know if I will even have need of those." She cocks her head to one side. "Or if I even could, if I am being honest. I have some skill with runes and potions, a bit dealing with magical beasties, and have dealt with more than a few magical or cursed items. But I have never used a wand before. It may not be a skill that I possess."

Harry looks absolutely gobsmacked. "Huh. You know, I never really considered that you might not be able to use a wand. I guess we should stop by Ollivander's and see if we can match you with one on the way. I have about fifty Galleons leftover from the last time I went to the bank, that ought to be enough for a change of clothes and a wand."

Alice stands up from where she has been resting on her bed. "Very well. Perhaps we should avail ourselves of the pubs fare before we go. It has been a busy day already, and it is likely to be a long one."

"Good idea. I haven't eaten anything since the train, I'm starving."

Alice looks at him sharply. "What do you mean? Did you not eat dinner last night?"

Harry looks at is feet, his expression one that broadcasts a wish that he had kept his mouth shut. "Yeah... I don't eat with the Dursleys unless they have company that know who I am and they can't get out of it. The plate of leftovers last night was all I could scrounge without getting in trouble. I was expecting you to be about two inches tall, so while it would have been a light meal at least it would have kept us for the night. When I turned around and saw you were big again, well, I just didn't want to say anything I guess. Sorry."

"You starved yourself that I might have my evening meal and you apologize for it? Harry, you are not to do that again. Neither the starving nor the apologizing for being a selfless and good person. I will be most upset if you continue this tendency towards martyrdom. Now stop it, and lets go get something to eat."

The meal prepared by Tom downstairs is both delicious and cheap, as part of it was included in the room rental. Deciding that even if she doesn't want to wear a robe, wearing something that isn't covered in old bloodstains is a bit of a priority they find their way to Malkin's.

While it is true that Madam Malkin's stocks and creates the finest of robes for all occasions, it is not the only clothing that she sells. In fact, she sells fine clothing of many types, as long as you are happy with styles that are between a hundred and four hundred years out of date by muggle standards. Needless to say, Alice walks out of the shop wearing a black silk with red highlights and trim knee length dress with a dark red pinafore, her skull storage box moved seamlessly over to the new attire. The socks are replaced with a similar pair, only red and black, and the boots she deems worthy to stay as they are still in good shape. It is the first new clothes she has had in what feels like forever, and as they continue the trip to Ollivander's shop she luxuriates in the feel of silk against her skin rather then the tattered, cheap cotton that she has worn for so long.

Entering Ollivander's, the two step up to the counter and Alice rings the bell for service. A few seconds later, the head of highly disobedient gray hair sticks itself out from behind a shelf, and the wrinkled face breaks into a smile. "Ah, Harry Potter. Holly and Phoenix feather, eleven inches. What brings you back into my little shop? Has there been a problem with your wand?"

Harry smiles, shaking his head at the enigmatic old mans uncanny memory. "No sir, my wand is working out just fine. I need to see if my friend here can be fitted for one."

Ollivander looks closer at Alice. "Is that so? Could I perhaps have your name young miss?"

"Alice Liddell. Though it boggles the mind why you would need my name to sell me a stick, however finely crafted it may be."

Ollivander stares at her for a moment, his eyes going a little wide. Then he laughs out loud, a sound that Harry is pretty sure hasn't been heard since before he was born. "My my, aren't you the little spitfire? Well, to assuage your befuddlement, I will reveal the secret. The Ministry of magic demands I file paperwork for every wand sold so they have some kind of record if they find later that crimes have been committed with it. Additionally, due to your obvious age, yours will undoubtedly have to be fitted with the trace before it is sold to you, so they can track the use of unauthorized underage magic."

Alice thinks for a moment. "Mr. Ollivander, is there perhaps a spell that you can use to determine whether or not someone is old enough to be considered an adult?"

He raises a pair of bushy eyebrows at her. "Of course, quite handy when one has a bit of dissension concerning the age of a buyer. Would you like this courtesy?"

"Please, if you would. It will quickly answer many of my questions."

Ollivander pulls out his own wand. "Very well, please hold still."

Muttering something under his breath as he waves his wand over her head, a number appears in the air. Backwards, to the children. But apparently it is not what he expects, as he then does so again and receives the same result. "How is this possible? Miss, according to this you are nearly a hundred and forty years old?"

Alice gives a slight smile, and says "With magic, all things are possible Mr. Ollivander. Now, it should be said that I have never owned a wand before and while I know that I have some unusual magical talents, I have no idea if I could effectively use a wand. Is there a way to quickly discover my standing in such things, so as to not waste any of your time?"

He nods. "Yes, of course. Usually I sell to children on their way to school for the first time or wizards and witches that have managed to damage their own somehow. But I do have a tester wand for the odd circumstance like this."

With that he reaches behind the counter for what looks at first glance to be a beaters bat. The massive construct of multiple wood types spliced together and bound with steel bands is at least as big around as her arm, and long enough for her to reach the floor with standing up straight. "Give this a wave. If you have any wand capability at all, there will be something in there that will react to you. It will likely be a muddled mess, whatever happens. Impossible to focus anything through one of these. But it will quickly let us know."

Alice picks up the thing in both hands and gives it a wave. A lot of things happen when she does.

The bat glows a bright, neon green, and begins to hum in a low tone that is increasing in pitch and volume. A shelf on the far side of the store turns into a red liquid, causing a splash and crash when it and everything that was on it falls to the floor. One of the rivets holding the steel bands onto the tester bat pops out to the sound of a gunshot and starts a small fire when it shatters an oil lamp, and finally a shower of what seems to be black sparks, sparks that instead of giving off light seem to suck it in, is released from the tip.

Ollivander quickly grabs the bat out of her hands, and uses his own wand to put out the fire.

Once that is done, he spares her another glance and speaks once again. "Yes. I think it is fair to say that you have wand potential. Based on what I just saw I have no idea what that potential is, but I have never once let a customer down and I don't intend to start now."

Then he pulls out a measuring tape and begins taking down his numbers. Harry notes that he seems to be a bit more serious about things than he had been when he was getting his own wand.

From this point on, it reminds him a lot of when he was getting fit for a wand. The old man is constantly mumbling, getting wands, handing them to her, and then quickly taking them back when things go awry. After nearly an hour of this, he suddenly stops. Looks at Alice in wonder. "You did say that your last name was Liddell, is that correct?" At her quick nod, he asks them to wait there for a minute while he goes to a safe in the back, and after a few minutes of fiddling with it brings back a very old leather bound wand box. "We used to sell them like this. Long ago, when my father ran the business. He once told me a story when I was quite young of a donation of hair to his wand shop, curiously however this donation was not given by the owner or killer of the animal. Rather, it was given by the animal itself. Apparently, it claimed that there was 'soon to be a little Liddell to claim the wand', and left a short 'riddle for the Liddell' so we would be sure to get the right buyer. Would you care to try?"

Alice looks decidedly perturbed. "Go ahead then, but before you get started know that I give it at least a fifty-fifty shot the answer will end up being 'The Chesire Cat.' I always wondered where the bedeviling creature had gotten off to when it disappeared. Apparently now I know."

Ollivander's jaw drops open like it has a ton of weight hanging off of it. "Yes, well, I guess we won't bother with this then." He says, tossing an ancient scrap of parchment behind him on the ground.

Handing her the wand in question, it turns out to be a very beautiful polished palmaletto, or zebra wood, with flowing light and dark wood grain over the length of it. Eleven inches long. Waving it produces an aura of silvery force that settles around her and Harry, then seems to shrink into their skin, followed by the sound of a giggling snicker.

Alice looks disgruntled. "Yes, that is him all right. He always makes that atrocious sound right before my life is about to get far more complicated than I would like."

"Hmm, yes. Well, normally I would tell you interesting things about the wood and core of your wand, but as this one was constructed by my father and using two components I am not entirely familiar with, we shall have to skip that part of the exchange. Do let me know how it works out for you though. That will be twelve galleons."

Harry pays the bill, and then they both pick up wand holsters intended to be worn on the forearm with built in notice-me-not charms for an additional sixteen total. Then they leave, and begin making their way to the bank.

Gringotts bank is always somewhat busy, it being the only moneychangers and loan institution in the wizarding world. But oddly, there are only a few patrons when Harry and Alice come in. Waiting patiently in line to speak to a teller the two cease their conversation by unspoken agreement, as there is very little chance to avoid being overheard here. When there is a teller available Harry walks over with Alice following and keeping a weather eye on these unusual creatures that run the bank. Oh, Harry has told her about them. The Goblins of Gringotts, and how they are clever and ruthless in battle or money matters, but supposedly decent and honorable out of the competitive arena. But having had small bipedal green and tan deformed creatures try to murder her incessantly for a century, a bit of healthy skepticism seems to be in order.

"Sir, I need to speak to someone concerning the Potter account and My friend here will be needing an account of her own."

The taciturn old wrinkled creature stares for a moment, then scribbles down some information and drops it in a box on his desk. Then pointing to an "Go wait by the doors. Someone will be by to take you to a private room as soon as we can find the potter accounts manager."

Harry is a bit out of sorts, hearing that he has an account manager. But he decides that they must assign a given goblin responsibility over any number of accounts and they need to find the one that manages his.

They wait by the door for a good ten minutes, and then a younger goblin, they assume due to the fewer wrinkles and clearer skin, walks up to them. He gives perhaps the slightest bow that has ever been witnessed by man or beast, then says "Follow me." He takes them through a doorway that leads deeper into the bank, and after a few minutes of walking they come to an office that is already occupied by an older goblin, clad entirely in hardened black leather. He stands as they enter, and the two can see the wicked looking dagger hanging off of his side with a foot of blade not counting grip, against the frame of the goblin it looks to be a mid sized sword with a spike on the pommel. He stares for a moment at Harry, then begins at a measured though clearly unhappy tone. "Mr Potter. My name is Accounts Manager Grimknott and we have much to discuss. Please, sit but be advised that we will be discussing information pertinent to your finances and potentially your parents last will and testament. It is up to you whether or not you would like your friend here with you when we do so."

Harry looks intrigued by the talk of his parents will, but nods. "Of course she can stay. Please continue."

Alice nods in thanks. If asked, she would have left. But leaving her charge in a room alone with an armed creature, supposedly honorable or not, was a chance she was loathe to take.

Once the two of them are settled, the goblin brings out a wooden box from behind the counter. It is quite an ornate box, and has a round hole in one side large enough for harry to easily fit his hand in. The box is just slightly larger than a piece of parchment, and has stubby little legs on the corners. The goblin slips a piece under it after placing it on the desk, then turns to Harry. "Mr. Potter, if you would place your right hand in the box. Be warned the sensation will not be comfortable, but won't last long."

Harry looks somewhat dubious. Looking in the box and seeing nothing but blackness. "So what is in the box?"

The goblin looks at him, obviously amused. "Your future, Mr. Potter. This box contains your future."

Harry, still looking like he isn't sure if this is a good idea, places his hand in the box. It feels warm at first, then hot. When it would be tipping the scales to burning, the sensation stops, and thinking the deed is done Harry attempts to remove his hand from the box only to find that he cannot move. Other then his eyes and the ability to blink, he is as immobile as if he were made of stone. Then he can see under the box there is a bright light running across the page. It flashes seven times, then stops. Suddenly, Harry can move again and immediately does so, pulling his hand out of the box and glaring at the now chortling goblin. "Well done Mr. Potter. You handled that better than most lords do. Now, lets see what we have."

Removing the parchment and giving it a once over, his eyes widen a bit and then he reads it more thoroughly. Giving a low whistle, he then looks up at Harry. "Well, it would appear Mr. Potter that we have more to discuss than even I thought." With that, he hands the parchment off to Harry, who brings it up to his bespectacled face and feels his own eyes widen as he begins going over the contents of the sheet.

According to this sheet, he is Harry Potter. That much isn't a shock. But being the heir to the house of Gryffindor by blood and Slytherin by conquest through his mother, that was not expected. The fact that he is the fifty percent owner of Hogwarts through this was was even more shock still. The numbers at the bottom of the page that detail his liquid assets through the three houses are astonishing. But more than all of that, what really dropped his jaw to the floor was the fact that according to this, he was already married by way of a soul bond through his magic and thus considered an adult.

To Alice Liddell Potter.

Turning to Alice, he hands her the parchment. "I don't know what is going on here. Do you have any idea?"

Alice raises a perfect eyebrow and takes the parchment. After reading it thoroughly she turns to the Goblin and asks, in a perfectly controlled tone. "Grimknott, do you perchance happen to know if there is any obvious visual cues to let one know that they are being soul bound to somebody?"

Grimknott is looking a little confused and more than a bit worried. A soul bond is supposed to be a great thing, a boon. The kind of love and acceptance that men and women of any race chase for their whole lives and never achieve. "There are many possible ways in which it can manifest, but with the depth of the bond that has been indicated, it will most likely have been represented by a silvery glow emanating from the both of you and then sinking into your skin, creating an unbreakable joining of souls."

Alice frowns, though the rage behind her eyes causes both Harry and Grimknott to step back a pace. "Cheshire, if you are smart you will stay hidden or dead. Because if you don't I shall make you that way."

All three hear the deep, cultured voice as if it comes from everywhere and nowhere. "Keep that fire, child. Burn away what binds, but take care not to lose your lifeline in the process."

Alice at this point loses all semblance of control and begins to shake, the parchment crinkling in her grasp as her fists become clenched. Muttering loud enough to be heard in the hall, she responds to the phantom voice. "Cheshire! God damn you Cheshire!"


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3.

Gringotts ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

A short break for tea is called, as Alice is in no mood to be vocal and Harry is nearly as distraught. A tray of tea and iced biscuits later, the meeting resumes.

"So, Lord and Lady Potter, are there any specifics I should detail before I start going over the troubles and details from our end?"

Alice peers at him from slitted eyes. "Yes, master goblin, I think that there is. I want to put my hand in your funny little box and verify the findings it got for Harry. It shouldn't be any trouble, and it would ease my mind to see the test performed with a lesser possibility of it having been staged."

Grimknott knows that look. That is the look his wife gives him when the only acceptable response is to shut up and do as he is told, so that is what he does. Ten minutes later, another piece of paper is produced which verifies everything Harry's did and then added some additional weirdness.

Alice is not amused. "How is it that I already have an account with your bank when I have never even seen it before today, and while we are at it where did all the money come from that sits in it?"

Grimknott is at this point getting more than a little concerned. Generally speaking, people finding out that they were suddenly millionaires isn't a cause for the kind of rage he sees in her eyes and stance.

"I apologize for the surprise Lady Potter. It is actually a family vault. According to our records, your family wasn't rich the last time we dealt with them directly, but the insurance claim on your home after the fire as well as the life insurance policies on the three members of your family that died in it were deposited here. There was some controversy at the time concerning arson, and a few people that were trying to get at the monies in question, but as muggles for the most part have no way to press a claim here, they had no way to collect. The rest is simply a hundred and thirty years worth of interest coupled with the forty percent that your father left in our care to be invested as we saw fit. Your accounts have done well with us."

"Then you are saying that mine was a magical family then?"

"Oh yes, Lady Potter. The Liddell's have held accounts with us for nearly six hundred years. It was thought that your line had been wiped out by the conflict with the dark wizard Grindlewald sometime in the early part of the century. In fact, it is lucky you reappeared when you did, the vault was only a few years from being declared abandoned. At that point the contents would have defaulted to the ministry, less a twenty percent processing fee. Something new that the ministry put through after Grindlewald in an effort to recoup losses from the war. Only accounts held by noble families are immune.

Alice slumps somewhat in her chair, and harry slides his chair against hers and wraps an arm around her. At first she stiffens, as she has been against human contact of any kind for so long. But almost immediately she begins to feel a sense of comfort, a feeling of being loved and protected. Treasured, even. It flows between them like an injection of pure ambrosia. She melts into his side, subconsciously trying to maximize the contact while her shoulders and face lose tension and countless years of stress. Harry as well is feeling the effects. He has never known affection like this, and for a moment it overwhelms him. After that moment though, he softly brushes his cheek against the top of her head and simply loses himself in the experience.

Grimknott clears his throat noisily. This is really sweet and all, but he has a job to do.

"It is worth noting, Lady Potter, that while there are a few items in your vault placed there by family, the rest of your family's actual property has unfortunately all reverted back to the crown due to lack of property taxes being paid. On the plus side, Gringotts can act as an intermediary for purposes of land purchase in the event that either or both of you would like to do so. That being said, I have a few question I need to ask for our own records. First, Harry, why have you or your guardian not responded to the monthly letters from Gringotts for the last ten years as we tried to get your parents wills read? On that note, do you happen to know why the Ministry copies of them were sealed by the Wizengamot?"

Harry looks at him confused, and Alice hisses under her breath. "I have never received any mail from Gringotts. With the exception of my Hogwarts letter, I have never received any mail at all. Alice and I are planning to look into that later today actually, now if you want."

Alice looks like she has tasted something foul. "Harry, don't you understand? This all comes back to Dumbledore again. He runs the Wizengamot. He sealed your parents wills. To see to it that the ones from Gringotts could not be activated, he found a way to deny you your mail. Probably some kind of forwarding that bypasses you entirely. Now we just need to figure out why, why is the old bugger so vile to you that he would do these things?

Grimknott looks stunned. "You have never received your bank statements? That is in direct violation of the treaty that we goblins have with wizarding Britain. This is a precursor to war, if it turns out it was authorized by the ministry."

Alice gets a grim look on her face, though the edge of her lips quirks into a half smile. "Easy enough to discover. Send him a statement, maybe something concerning his upcoming birthday and the Potter accounts. Put a tracker on the owl and the message, and see where it goes. If it goes to Hogwarts, and more specifically Dumbledore, then you will know and can take appropriate action. Might I recommend closing his and all of his employees accounts and offering forty eight hours for them to clear their vaults? I suspect that such an inconvenience would work far better than words to explain your irritation."

Harry pipes up at this point. "I am actually a little surprised that you haven't already taken action against him, after all it was his employee that broke in last year."

Grimknott's eyes widen to the size of saucers. "What? What do you know? Who broke in?"

"Quirrell did. He was possessed by Voldemort at the time, so I am not sure if Quirrell was directly responsible or not. They were after the philosopher's stone. But Dumbledore must have known something was up because he cleaned the vault out less than a day before the break in. He never said anything to you guys?"

Grimknott has a look on his face that could crush stone with its severity. "No. Indeed he did not."

Harry gives an apologetic smile. "He is just making friends everywhere, isn't he?"

Grimknott stands. "Give me a few minutes to set up this tracked owl and speak to legal concerning our options. It might be as long as an hour. If you like, we can provide a complimentary meal in the form of take out from any establishment in the alley while you wait."

Alice looks up from where she is once again leaning into Harry. Despite her irritation at the way the day is going,she cannot deny that she is practically in heaven, between the silk lined clothing and the feeling of peace being transmitted through their bond. Like a terribly pleasant virus, she thinks somewhat petulantly. "That would be wonderful, thank you Grimknott. For what it may be worth, I believe I speak for both of us when I apologize for making your day perhaps more complicated than you might have liked."

At this Grimknott chuckles as he reaches for the door handle. "The goblin nation has been looking for a way to stick it to that bearded buffoon and Hogwarts in general ever since it became clear to us that the reason we are so disliked is due to that ghost professor of his, Binns, and his preoccupation with telling a biased version of every goblin interaction that has ever taken place. Trust me when I say that if we can make this work, it will be a busy day but one to be looked back upon fondly."

A meal later, the two are lounging on a small loveseat that was brought in, asleep with Alice half laying on Harry. Grimknott's laughing return awakens them as he comes back in.

"Good news! According to legal, mail tampering by the headmaster of Hogwarts will easily allow for us to shut down the accounts of anybody attached to it. What I didn't realize when I went to them was just how big a coup this was going to be. Hogwarts pays all employees and other people attached to it through direct deposit into their vaults here at Gringotts, and the board of governors for the place receives a small, but steady recompense for their time. Apparently there is a lot of prestige attached to being on that board because between them and the wizards and witches that perform the Owl and Newt examinations, the names on this list are practically a who's who of wizarding Britain. Once it is made public why this is happening, the deliberate and long lasting redirection of the mail for the last surviving member of a noble house, Dumbledore won't have the political clout to get a window seat at the ice cream parlor. Not only that, the concessions we can get out of these people to allow them to bank with us again will be beautiful, not only for the profit but also the tantalizing sound of grinding teeth as they try to get back in our good graces. Ah yes. It is a good day to be alive."

He smiles. Obviously pleased with the metric shit tons of chaos that will flow like cheap gravy from this disaster.

"But, now back to you two. If you could come back to the desk we have, I am sure, much more to discuss."

Harry and Alice, after disentangling themselves from each other, come over and sit down.

"Now then, I guess the next thing to go over is the contents of the will that Dumbledore sealed. I want you to understand that we will be unable to enact portions of this that are not handled internally within Gringotts. Anything that has to happen through the ministry will require that their copies of the wills be unsealed first. Fortunately, most of the meddling that could be done there has been negated by their own laws declaring you an adult. Anyway, there are two main points that I need to make clear. First, according to the last will and testament of your father, your magically sworn godfather, Sirius Black, is in fact not the secret keeper that led Voldemort to your home as a child. He wasn't the secret keeper at all. Nor was Remus Lupin, his other primary beneficiary aside from Lilly, yourself, Black, and one Peter Pettigrew. The status of Pettigrew as a secret keeper is not detailed in the will, but as the only primary beneficiary to not be disqualified by the will, let us say that there is a bit of suspicion there. As for the status of these people. Remus Lupin is alive and as near as we can tell living primarily in the muggle world. Pettigrew is dead supposedly, killed by Black. Black is incarcerated in the wizarding prison of Azkaban, theoretically for the murder of Pettigrew in a wizarding duel that also killed a substantial number of muggles. Oddly, when our research team was looking into the facts at trial we found nothing. So it is either sealed beyond the skill of our people to get their hands on it, or it doesn't exist for some reason. It might also be worth mentioning that the system we use to determine accounts closure for reason of client death has not reported Pettigrew as having died. Now, the system is by no means foolproof. It can and has been tricked before. But it isn't easy, and I don't think Black had the skill to do so while in the middle of a duel."

The older goblin sighs, rubbing his fingers on the bridge of his terrifically long nose.

"The other thing you should know is that according to the wills, both your father and your mother left a listing of people that they would like to take you in the event of their deaths. Obviously, there is a lot of overlap on the two lists. Interestingly though, while we don't know precisely where you did end up going, we know for a fact that you didn't go anywhere you were supposed to. We figured that out when you would have been five and we stepped up our efforts to contact you due to some concerns with succession."

Harry looks curious at that. "What kind of concerns?"

Grimknott's eyes close briefly. "Well, it doesn't matter anymore, but thanks to a bunch of junk laws that the Malfoy's pushed through seven years ago, anybody in possession of an hereditary seat in the government of the wizarding community needs to present themselves at least once every other year to verify they are alive, whether or not they are able to claim their seat at that time. He pushed it through while he had the minister essentially paid for, and used the large number of houses that were decimated in the conflict with Voldemort to fill seats for his peer group. Largely comprised of Death Eaters that escaped incarceration by claiming they were under the imperious curse and so were not responsible for their own actions. The Potter's power went to the Goyle family, as I recall. Since political clout can often lead to investment opportunities, and the house of Potter has always been a valued client of ours, we saw the problem and tried to find you before it went through. Assuming he knew where you were, it is one more thing to lay at the feet of Dumbledore I suppose. He was presiding over the Wizengamot when it got pushed through, so he knew all about it."

Harry isn't really sure what to say to that. Political power isn't something he ever considered that he would have, so he has not looked into it and doesn't really know what has been taken.

Alice is seething. "Account manager Grimknott, assuming my... husband does not mind, may I see the record of transactions for his accounts for the last ten years? I can think of only a few reasons for Dumbledore to allow Harry's political power to be stripped from him and none are good. Most in fact involve a fair bit of greed. I do not know where Dumbledore acquired this power that he seems to have wielded over Harry, but the notion that he would have attempted to fiddle with or withdraw from his accounts seems high to me."

Grimknott looks at her, his eyes slightly widened. "You have a good mind for business, particularly the more backstabbing nature of business. Yes, that was another thing we needed to run by you today, in fact it is near the last thing we really need to go over. I don't know if you were aware of this, Harry, in fact I am beginning to guess not. But Dumbledore had installed himself as your magical guardian. Basically that is something usually only done for muggle-borne or the magical children of squibs. The idea is to give them contact with somebody in the magical world that can act as a go between and advocate, as well as teach them wizarding customs. That gave him access to your trust vault which was the vault that you got into last summer for your school supplies. That vault automatically refills from whatever it has left in it at the beginning of the fiscal year from the main Potter vault until the contents are fifty thousand Galleons. It was supposed to be used for your maintenance. Dumbledore has been cleaning it out every year until last, when he only took about half. So unless that money actually went to your maintenance, and the impression I am getting is that it did not, he has stolen about a half of a million gold from the Potter's vaults in the last ten years and sadly, there is very little we can do about it as technically the withdrawals were legal."

Harry slumps in his chair. "Half a million? And there is nothing we can do? Tell me Grimknott, is he still considered my magical guardian? Will this shite continue, or can I be done with the bearded bastard?"

Grimknott nods. "Yes, you are done with him now. Being declared an adult has ripped away nearly all power he could have had over you unless he somehow manages to get your emancipation by way of marriage overturned. Highly unlikely, but he is the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, and it must be said that taking power away from the boy who lived is likely to be something both light and dark families will not be adverse to. The light families will do so because they tend to follow his lead, and the dark families will because they, by and large, hate you slightly more than they hate Dumbledore. Your best bet might be to simply ignore the fact and let him wonder what happened. My recommendation would be to clear the account and stop the transfer. Let him continue to have access to the emptied vault, so he thinks he still has rights to it and you just spent it all. Then we will shut down that vault like all the others connected to Dumbledore once that tracker on our owl proves what we know that it will. The bank won't divulge information that is of a personal nature, and it is unlikely that he will start requisitioning paperwork from the ministry, as that would require that he admit his unlawful connection with you."

Harry grimaces. "Well, if that is the best we can do. He is going to come unglued when you close all of those accounts you know."

Alice smirks. "Yes. Yes he will. He won't have much choice, considering that not only is Gringotts his wizarding bank, it is also the only wizarding bank. At least in Britain, anyway."

The door to the office opens, and a younger goblin comes in carrying a scroll for Grimknott, who upon reading it breaks into a savage grin. "To expedite our findings, we magically transported our owl to a point about three miles from the school before we released it with it's letter. Said letter was just delivered to Dumbledore's desk. This message is letting us know that the legal department is following through now. We can expect things to get quite interesting here at the bank for awhile. You are welcome to stay here and enjoy the fun, or we can put you up somewhere else for a couple of days. But if you wish to leave, it would be best to do so now if you don't wish to be noticed. I think it is safe to say the bank will be quite busy for the next couple of days."

Harry and Alice consider their options for less than fifteen seconds before deciding that this has far too much potential to be entertaining to let it go. They are taken to a viewing room over the main hall of the bank and peer down into the mass of people, tellers, desks, customers, and goblin warriors as the tension builds.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Much ado about money.

Meanwhile, in a castle in Scotland.

Albus Dumbledore was having a fairly decent morning, if the truth was to be had. The house elves of Hogwarts had once again prepared his breakfast and delivered it to his office at nine o'clock so he could sleep in to celebrate the end of another term. Of course, within the week he will need to clear out the third floor corridor. It would be a bad idea for him to leave the castle while that setup was still around. The Department of Magical law Enforcement would have a field day with it if they happened to come across it during the castle summer safety inspection. You would think after a thousand years and no problems they would trust the builders of the school, but no. The Ministry of Magic just has to find a way to stick its abnormally annoying proboscis where it isn't welcome, and is happy to ramrod laws through the Wizengamot to make it happen.

Half the reason Albus stays in politics these days is in an effort to see to it that laws that are going to annoy him personally don't come to pass. Occasionally leaning hard on something he doesn't like is a small price to pay to stay otherwise untouchable.

It would be a good idea to get a hold of Nicholas and let him know that the mirror had been destroyed, presumably the stone had gone with it. He allowed himself a sad smile, tinged with regret. It is highly unfortunate that the poor man was now going to die, as without the potion that could be filtered through the philosophers stone he was probably within a few months of the end of his six hundred plus year existence. Such a great man. But, what's done is done and really it is all for the greater good. A chance to trap Voldemort and Harry in the same castle for a year when one was too weak to challenge Albus directly and the other too inexperienced to realize he was being played for a fool was too promising an opportunity to pass up. If it wasn't for that bloody prophesy, he could have dealt with the situation himself rather than set up the ridiculous tomfoolery he had been forced to.

As he picks a bit of bacon out from between his teeth with a folded piece of parchment, he considers what his next move should be. It seems unlikely that Voldemort will be enticed back into the school until he is powerful enough that frankly, Albus didn't want him there. Possessing Quirrell, he had been a risk but a manageable one. Oh sure, the potential existed for a student to get hurt but it was highly unlikely that it would be Quirrell, or rather Voldemort, doing it directly. Tom, (Voldemort's true name being Tom Riddle) was just a little too fond of life to do anything that was going to put him directly in the limelight. There was that bit of bother with the troll and the unicorns, but really aside from that the only way anyone was likely to get hurt was if they had been where they were told they ought not to be. Or they were playing Quidditch. Dangerous, barbaric sport. The next time somebody gave him a hard time about injuries at the school, Albus decides that he will offer to do away with the house teams and riding brooms in the school. See how quickly these bloodthirsty lunatics backpedal so they don't have to say goodbye to their damnable bludgers.

Tom, though. Without better information, there wasn't really any plans to make on that front. Harry though, that could be a problem.

Albus smiles slightly at Harry's parting words this year. Going to another school, indeed. Since he needs his Magical Guardian to enroll him, a roll that he holds for Harry as well as all the Muggleborn students, Harry really doesn't have a choice. He can bring his too tiny ass back here next fall or he can be obliviated of his memory of the wizarding world altogether, with his magic bound and left with the Dursleys being his only family or friends for all time. Rarely has there been a time when Albus was willing to chortle slightly while being firmly convinced that he holds all the cards, but this is certainly one of them.

That said, he could cause some problems if his attempt at rebellion flailed in the wrong directions. So he would have to dangle a carrot for the boy to get him back in line. It is unfortunate that the circumstances were not going to allow him to live a long and prosperous life, but at least when Voldemort finally gets off his entirely too wretched posterior and does away with the poor boy, some good will come of it. After Dumbledore gets rid of Tom, that is. Absorbing the lordships of Slytherin, Gryffindor, Potter, and if he can find the documentation to prove it as the direct bloodline wasn't quite as clear and easy to verify, Peverell and Gaunt. The ancestral surnames of the Potters and Tom Riddle himself, on his mothers side. Five noble titles, effective control of Hogwarts beyond merely being the headmaster, magic recognizing him as being the master of the Deathly Hallows, Nothing in the mix that would cause him to have to abandon any of his current titles and privileges, and all for the price of once again being the savior of wizard kind. Power to change this society for the better that even the most proactive and optimistic Minister of magic couldn't even imagine. But yes, the boy getting out of hand before his unfortunate end would be problematic. Perhaps an offer to spend the last week or two of summer at the Weasleys would be appropriate. The family would dearly love to play host to the boy-who-lived, and Albus himself wouldn't be out of pocket for it.

It is nearly eleven and after a trip to the loo before he starts doing what little paperwork he hasn't already shuffled off to other professors over the years. The dragon of Gringotts smiles back at him from his in box, the owl in question must have dropped it off while he was asleep or perhaps dealing with his morning ablutions. Something more for Harry, apparently. The goblins are unbelievably persistent, you can't take that from them. Using a small knife on his desk he opens it up to take a peak. Hmmm... Nearing twelfth birthday, blah blah, come down and have your blood tested for possible inheritance, blah blah, thank you for trusting Gringotts, blah. Well. That was a complete waste of his time, he thinks as he wads the parchment up and tosses it into the basket for the elves to dispose of.

An hour later, as he is finishing up the paperwork and considering getting some tea, another owl wearing the livery of Gringotts makes it's way into the office. The headmaster is seriously considering looking into passing some kind of anti-mail badgering law for a moment until he realizes that this one is actually addressed to him. Not Harry. Not Hogwarts. But him. Interesting. Opening the letter, he begins to read.

To the former Gringotts patron Albus Dumbledore.

We are forced at this time to cease all transactions with you. We will be locking down all accounts that have received or have been given currency of any kind from or to your vaults, or from or to vaults controlled by the institution that you control, one "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." As a courtesy we are offering to hold off on our lock down protocols until the close of business this Friday, which will allow our customers the option to clean out their vaults before we are forced to close them and give the contents to the Ministry of Magic less a 20% handling fee. Due to the nature and longevity of the infraction that causes this action, we are levying a fine of 5% for all gold withdrawn, transferred between vaults, or otherwise manipulated by people controlling the vaults in question.

We at Gringotts are not sorry to lose your business, and want to assure you that you will not, under any circumstances, be allowed to bank with us again.

May your gold be too worthless for a leprechaun to bother with, and may the daggers of your enemies find themselves in inappropriate parts of your anatomy.

Gringotts.

As he reads, Albus' eyes grow wider and wider. They can't do this. Can they? What infraction could they be thinking of? In his long life, it can be said that Albus has on occasion been at odds with goblins. The ones here at Gringotts and some of the less organized clans abroad. But he hasn't dealt with a goblin outside of making a personal deposit or withdrawal for a dozen years at least. Certainly nothing illegal. Even his withdrawals from the potter account have been completely legal. Perhaps a bit scandalous, he thinks to himself with a ghost of a smirk, but legal. He then thinks about the accounts that might be effected. His own will be annoying, but he is familiar enough with the muggle world that if it was truly needed he could liquidate his assets into muggle currency and deal with them. The muggle concept of insurance means that even though vault contents themselves are not nearly as well defended as can be had at Gringotts, as long as nothing being kept is irreplaceable then the wealth itself is actually safer. It will obviously effect the Hogwarts staff. That is unfortunate, but since they more or less live under his thumb and the majority worship him as the second coming of Merlin, he should be able to make a heartfelt apology decrying goblin paranoia at the next staff meeting and get around that roadblock. But who else?

Well, whoever it is really doesn't matter. He can't let this black mark stand anyway, so he will need to make a trip to the alley today and sort this all out after lunch, and possibly a quick check in at Privet drive to make sure Harry made it home alright. Under a disillusionment, of course. It wouldn't do for the boy to think anybody held him as valuable or believed he had worth. When the time comes for him to nobly sacrifice himself to the destruction of Voldemort thanks to that unfortunate prophecy, it is important that he see no other alternative.

An hour later, Albus is stepping away from the curb opposite the Dursley home trying to figure out why there is no sign of Harry in the building. As the wizard in control of the wards, he knows that there are two people in the home and that both are muggles. Making his way to the front porch, he raps on the door lightly with the back of his knuckles. A few seconds later, a slender, long necked woman answers the door. Not entirely unattractive, but middle aged with harsh features and a scowl that could sink battleships, she attempts to slam the door in his face as soon as she gets a glimpse of him.

"No! Go away, we don't want any trouble with your kind! Dudley! The freaks are here!"

Albus is less than impressed with the hospitality he is receiving. A quick flick of his wand sees the door flung open and Petunia Dursley knocked onto her butt in the hall.

"Now Petunia, I am merely here to check on dear Harry. I will be leaving as soon as you can tell me where he is. Furthermore, I will have you know that referring to myself or any other magical person as a "freak" is likely to get you in trouble one of these days if you keep at it. Just a friendly reminder. Not all that carry a wand are as tolerant as I am."

Scrambling to her feet, she sends Albus a scathing look. "What gives you the right to force your way into my home and demand information of me? What gives you the right to tell me how I should speak in my own home? If you don't want to be called a freak then maybe you should leave. As for Harry, he was gone when we woke up today. He could be out for the day, he does that on occasion when he is feeling too lazy to do his chores and decides the punishment for ignoring them is preferable. It is my hope that he has done a runner and we can be done with him, you, and all of your freakishness! Now get out or I shall call the constable!"

Not quite sure how to respond to the levels of vitriol that he is receiving, and since his light check with Legilimency has verified that she is telling the truth as she sees it, he leaves. Harry shouldn't have the independence to truly strike out on his own, so no doubt he can be found at the home of one of his friends if he has indeed "done a runner." The Grangers and Weasleys would be good places to check. But he doesn't have time for that right now. This ridiculousness at Gringotts really cannot wait any longer. Apparition to the Diagone Alley travel point is quick, and the walk to Gringotts marred only by a general mood of irritation and exasperation that seems to permeate the alley. From more than a block away, he can see that the line to reach a teller at the bank stretches out the front doors of the bank and halfway to the street. Walking up the steps to the bank itself, bypassing the line as he is far to busy and important to be bothered waiting behind all of these people, he is met by a group of six goblin warriors. The lead goblin unfurls a parchment, then activates some kind of magic on the collar he wears. When he speaks, his voice booms through the alley as though god himself was at the mic.

"Albus Wulfric Perceival Brian Dumbledore. For the crime of line manipulation through mail theft, you are held in contempt of the standards of this institution. For the crime of directly tampering with the mail of a patron of Gringotts, you are to nevermore be allowed to do business with our bank. For the excessive duration of ten years that both of these conditions have been maintained by you and against the last member of a noble line, it has been determined by the legal council of Gringotts that all accounts you or your business have touched in any way will be audited, fines levied, and barred from business with Gringotts unless they are willing to state that they have not, nor ever will conspire with or allow themselves to be manipulated by you, the goblin killing wizard known as Voldemort, or to actively work against the best interests of Gringotts in any way. Further, it has been determined by legal that a fine will be levied against your personal accounts and then the accounts of Hogwarts to be paid split between Gringotts and any honest customer that has been inconvenienced by this situation. You are not to return until close of business on Friday to clean out whatever is left of your accounts, if anything."

The goblin makes it a point to slowly roll up the parchment in his hands, sealing it shut with a padded metal clip, and puts it carefully back into a scroll case. During this time, all the customers that he was walking by and more that have heard the goblin from all over the alley are now staring at him with barely contained disgust. Once he is done, and Albus slowly comes to the realization that he needs to speak or else he will be forced to allow this to stand. However, before he can decide how to proceed the goblin once again speaks, though the volume is a bit lower. The fact that he and his five compatriots have all drawn their weapons is less encouraging though. "Now, Dumbledore. Get off our property unless you wish to add to the bloodstains that dishonest wizards have left on our steps for the hundreds of years we have been doing business with your kind."

Deciding that he will have to go to the ministry to get any satisfaction, Albus leaves. The day started out so nice, too.

-HaA-

'Wizards are kinda dumb' is the first thought that Harry has when the throng of irritated patrons starts their trickling into the bank. A trickle that quickly becomes a surge by two in the afternoon. Yelling, threats, and unpleasantness abound. The other goblins in the viewing area with Harry and Alice find this unbelievably entertaining, as the people assigned to assist these wizards and witches through their current dilemma have been cleared to levy additional fines at their own discretion based on whatever criteria they desire, subject to review of course in the event of abuse. Admittedly, the fines cap at forty percent by ministerial law that Gringotts has signed to, but in the case of some of these wizards, forty percent is a hell of a lot of gold. Harry can't help but smile a bit when the family of Malfoy makes an appearance. Their son, Draco, being possibly the greatest argument Harry has ever heard for mandatory beatings being the prescribed punishment for being an insufferable git. Not knowing anything personally about his family aside from that Draco considers his father to have the powers of a god, based on how he often threatens with telling the man when he comes across anything he doesn't like, he finds himself moderately curious what will happen.

Alice has spent a bit of time while they were waiting for the mass to arrive looking at some paperwork the goblins had out in the observation area, as well as speaking with them. So she already knows what will happen to Malfoy, as well as any other patron that that is caught up in this that they suspect to be a death eater. But that doesn't make the floor show any less entertaining.

-HaA-

Lucius Malfoy was incensed. Being made to wait in line like a commoner, and the line being so long, what were these useless creatures doing, that they can't even manage their own bank? Were it not for the need to keep a civil tongue until he had learned just precisely what the hell was going on, his words would be tearing strips of the disgusting little creatures.

"Forgive me, goblin, but I fail to see why my accounts need to be audited nor why I should have to swear any kind of magical oath in order to access my gold or other vault contents. I have done nothing wrong, and this situation is entirely uncalled for."

The goblin gives him a look that might almost be a smirk, except that it has the long suffering eyes of one that knows that what they are going to say will be taken poorly, yet there is nothing else to do.

"Unfortunate, human. However, there is nothing to be done here. I do not make policy. If you have a complaint, I am more than willing to give you the forms to fill out and turn in. From the time you turn them in it can take between four to six weeks for the bank management to get to your specific complaint, possibly longer given the current situation. As that time frame is comfortably past the deadline for the confiscation of your vault contents and there is no way at present to know how the manager will respond to your claims, I have to recommend that you move along with either declaring your innocence of crimes against goblin-kind and lack of collusion with the former patron Albus Dumbledore and the goblin killing wizard and thief known as Voldemort under the influence of truth serum, or that you accept the fine levied and clear your vaults today."

To say that Lucius Malfoy was disturbed would be to put it lightly, and the sound of grumbling from behind him coming from multiple sources lets him know that he is not the only supporter of Voldemort currently in the bank.

"I will be going to the ministry to lodge a formal complaint and we will see what comes of this little incident." Lucius says with a snarl.

"Human, it is my sad duty to inform you that if you do not take the truth serum option now, the offer will not be made again. We are well aware that given time for the potions to take effect there are ways to fool the truth serum. If you leave the bank without making a choice, we will no longer be able to accept your patronage under any circumstances." The goblin says this in a bored monotone that makes Lucius want to scream in rage, though he holds his tongue for now.

"I will return with my lawyer, and a ministerial presence."

The goblin looks at him. "By 'ministerial presence' are you alluding to bringing ministry hit wizards into Gringotts for purposes of intimidating bank employees, Mr. Malfoy? Or did I misunderstand you?"

Lucius, convinced that the goblin using his proper name is a sign of capitulation, quickly tries to take advantage.

"It can mean many things. But currently it means that if you know what is good for you, you will stop all this nonsense immediately. If I have to leave and come back, things will go poorly for your employer." Lucius looks at the goblin as the green creature has now written quick note and passed it off to a much younger looking goblin who scampers off with it.

"What was that all about?"

"Just summoning an accounts manager, human."

"I see. So we will be resolving this today after all?" Lucius offers the goblin a smirk.

The goblin glances up from where he is now writing in a ledger at a furious pace. "Oh, yes. I suspect that when the manager gets here things will move along quite quickly."

The elder Malfoy leans against the counter and while buffing his fingernails against his fine robes, glaces back at his friends in line, offering a single cocked eyebrow and a smile.

A few minutes later the accounts manager arrives. Harry, looking down from the concealed observation room above, notes that it is Grimknott that has chosen to deal with this.

Lucius is about to open his mouth to start what could be charitably called 'aggressive negotiations' when his wife Narcissa lets out a decidedly less than ladylike expletive while grabbing his shoulder. Upon turning, he sees that no less than twenty heavily armed and armored goblins have moved up behind the Malfoy family, weapons drawn and smiles showing neither humor nor joy.

Grimknott raises a hand, staying their weapons for the moment. "Lord Malfoy. We appear to have a problem. Fortunately, I have a solution. By treaty with your ministry of magic, your threatening of the sovereignty of the goblin nation of Gringotts does not allow us to levy a fine of more than forty percent of your vaults contents, The ministry, under such circumstances, would take a further twenty percent in its own fines for a member of its own government participating in an act of war. As the instigator of such an act, all the contents of your vaults will searched and identified, with any items illegal to either the ministry or unlawful to keep in vaults maintained by Gringotts given an estimated value, then destroyed. We will, of course, take ours and the ministry's fines out of the total value before this happens. In the event there is anything left, you can retrieve it when we close the vault after the investigation concludes in one hundred and eighty days. Do not be late, and do not darken the door of our nation until that time. You have one minute to leave the premises before we level additional fines up to and including your life to the pile that you already owe us."

Lucius, if possible, turns even whiter than he was before. He takes a step back and begins to sputter in frustration. "You can't do that! I am a member of the Wizengamot! I will have this place shut down and your entire staff in Azkaban prison by the end of the week for this outrage, assuming the court does not just kill you all outright!"

Grimknott ignores his outrage, looking at the clock over the doors leading to the alley. "Forty five seconds, Mr Malfoy."

Lucius Malfoy is many things, but though his recent outburst might suggest otherwise a fool is not one of them. Realizing that he is in a situation where there is no possible way to win, he gathers what dignity he can and begins making his way to the doors with his wife and son in tow, both absolutely shocked at this turn of events. Even if the worst should happen, Lucius will not be poor by any stretch. He doesn't keep illegal items in the vaults in Gringotts, and truthfully while he does keep the lions portion of his gold there, even losing everything he keeps within Gringotts would still leave him among the top two hundred wealthiest families in magical Britain. But unless he can somehow get this travesty overturned his regular donations to the sitting Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, as well as his efforts to prop up the businesses and industries owned and invested in by his Death Eater brethren would have to cease. The ripples of this would undoubtedly settle into the magical world within the year, and what would be left for his son if that happened? Competing for jobs with some mudblood whore? Unacceptable. Simply unacceptable. As he leaves the bank, he could swear he hears the giggling laughter of children from somewhere above.

-HaA-

After Malfoy, things went quite smoothly. Seemingly nobody was willing to risk the kind of punishment levied against the leader of the pure bloods, so aside from an occasional scowl, there are no more problems with the processing. After a few hours of watching this, with tummies grumbling and the bank finally closing its doors for the day, Grimknott arrives back in the observation room to see that Harry and Alice have once again found themselves on a loveseat near the back of the room that has been supplied as a courtesy by the Gringotts management team for their guests. Leaning against each other and nibbling on a tray of fresh fruits and vegetables that sits on their laps.

"Hey, Grimknott! Just wanted to say, that fiasco with the Malfoys was brilliant. Couldn't have happened to a nicer slice of turd muncher." Harry beams at his account manager, highly amused by the day.

Alice lifts a single eyebrow, though the fact that she can't quite bring herself to sit up straight and continues to lean against Harry alleviates much of the severity of the look. "Slice of turd muncher? Really, Harry, I expect better from you. That said, it was quite amusing to see the bigot put in his place. Has Gringotts prepared for the likely results of today's activities? It would be a shame if our activities were to cause your nation any long term problems."

Grimknott smiles, and for a change the smile actually shows warmth. "I doubt there will be any significant repercussions. The current Minister of Magic is far more concerned with looking good than actually doing anything productive. As bad as the current situation must be for him politically, he would do nearly anything to avoid having to go to war while he is the sitting minister. But using this as our leverage, we can discontinue services to a number of customers that we feel will likely be problematic moving forward. Besides, Gringotts is only keeping about half of the gold we are taking in fines. The rest is being distributed among the patrons that have been inconvenienced by this. Basically, anybody willing to take the truth serum and comes through it clean will be receiving equal shares that will far and away exceed any amount that they might have had to pay in any kind of fine. We are a business as well as a nation after all. It does us no good to drive away our entire customer base."

Alice's lips quirk up in a smile. "So Voldemort's supporters will be donating their gold to the very people they despise. I must say, Grimknott. I like your style."

Harry laughs, then gets a slightly more serious look on his face. "So, Grimknott. Two things. First, is there any way that we can get the records for my Godfather's trial based on the fact that he was my Godfather, and we need a place to stay. Since between the two of us we surpass being filthy stinking rich by a large margin we were thinking of buying something. Can Gringotts help us with that?"

Grimknott looks thoughtful. "As to your Godfather, the only real chance would be to convince Amelia Bones of the need. She is the current head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, or DMLE. Whether or not she would go for it I couldn't say, but if she decides to assist you it might be advisable to remind her that neither her nor the current Minister were in office when he was incarcerated. As in, neither has to admit personal wrong doing to investigate this. In purchasing property, we can certainly help with that, or we can hire work crews to make one or more of the old Potter properties livable again. If you are trying to stay out of sight though, I would recommend buying something new care of Gringotts. For a modest fee we can ward the property as well. Also, Harry, before I forget we managed to find the owl redirect on you. The ward itself must be on the property of where you lived until recently, but the residual on yourself will take at least a year to dissipate on it's own. We can leave the ward itself up, and as long as you don't go back to that property after we decontaminate you it should no longer be a problem. Would you like us to do that? I ask because if we do this, your immediate evidence of the tampering will be gone. It might be handy to have when you talk to the DMLE, an they are capable of removing it there as well."

Harry considers for a minute. "OK, we will go ahead and leave it for now. But unless there is something else, I think Alice and I should head back to our room in the Leaky Cauldron. We can talk about properties tomorrow after we stop by the ministry I think. Thank you for your help Grimknott."

Grimknott laughs. "Thank you, Lord Potter. The amount you have made possible today I wouldn't have even believed could happen had I been told yesterday. Sleep well, and we will see you tomorrow."

-HaA-

Authors note: Sorry for the delay people, this chapter really fought me tooth and nail. It is a lot more fun for me to write all from the perspective of one or maybe two characters, and to keep things moving at a fairly brisk pace. But, I am writing this from the perspective of your average reader of fan fiction. Basically, there are certain tropes That are almost expected in Harry Potter fan fiction that I wanted to get out of the way quickly so that new readers down the road would be able to determine if this was what they wanted to spend the next day or two on. By the end of this chapter I will have covered most of the basics, and the following is a quick guide through what has and some of what has not been covered so you can make the call as to whether or not you wish to continue before you have dumped any more time into this.

James and Lilly are dead.

Remus is alive.

Serius Black is incarcerated.

The Dursleys will have no impact on this story aside from having been jerks in the past.

Cornelius Fudge is essentially worthless.

Dumbledore is less evil than he is opportunistic and self serving, but is definitely not as light as he wishes people to believe he is and since he has decided that there is no way to save Harry, to profit from the situation.

The magic system remains largely unchanged, although as in the book some people have predilections towards mastery in certain areas or even abilities that do not match the standard.

Voldemort IS evil, and not some kind of misunderstood misanthrope, as I have seen people attempt to portray him in the past.

While there will be relationships, there will not likely be anything sexual. (Or if there is, it will not be until the children hit sixth or seventh year. Where you live can effect the age of consent, sure, but anything pre-sixteen is kinda icky. Just saying.) There will be no slash, in any case. Not my thing.

There will not be any third party parents popping up out of nowhere to take him under their wing. (Not saying those stories are bad, just that this isn't one of them.)

Snape walks a fine line between useful spy and epic douche bag. So, you know. No change there from cannon.

This will not be a harem fic, though Harry may not be the only one to have a significant other by the end.

While the works of Lewis Carroll and McGee are both inspirations for this, I am unlikely to introduce any other characters from their works that I haven't already. There may be references to them, though.

So, if you still want to continue then... I will try to get the next chapter up sooner rather than later. Thanks much!


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Red Tape Wrecking Crew.

They started the night each in their own twin bed, but that only lasted an hour. The feeling of being close was just too good, made it to easy to sleep, and scared away the wretched dreams that plagued them both. Alice awoke the next morning on her side and curled slightly into a ball, with Harry curled around her and an arm thrown over her. As neither had thought to get her any kind of pajamas the day before, she was dressed only in underwear and a t-shirt , as was Harry. But there was no impure thoughts intruding upon either mind. In fact, as they both seemed to gain consciousness at the same time it can be said that the only thoughts going through either head at that moment boiled down to being astounded at how well they had slept and how much better they felt today than they had the day before. Removing his hand from where it lay against her chest, Harry at once realizes not only where his hand was but also how inappropriate it is. As he begins to stammer an apology, he is cut off by Alice.

"I'll not accept an apology for giving me the best nights sleep I have ever had, nor do I intend to begrudge the husband that has had the misfortune to be shackled to my madness for sleeping with me. Though, if you feel a need to do something to make up for some kind of perceived slight, I would not be adverse to you securing breakfast while I make use of the bath?"

Deciding that he was getting let off easy, Harry easily agrees.

Her quick bath is almost finished when she hears the door to their room open again, and Harry's voice calling her out to have breakfast. After putting on the clothes that they had the inn's house elves clean the night before, a quick bite of eggs and bacon with a muffin on the side.

"So, I was thinking that it might be a good idea to hit the Ministry of Magic early today. Maybe get in to see Bones before the crowd shows up to complain about things at Gringotts. Because you know that they will."

Alice rolls her eyes. "Of course they shall, indeed if things are not brought to heel soon this could spiral into another war of sorts, though I doubt it will progress beyond economic sanctions and fines. The Ministry probably has more power in the field, but within the bank the goblins reign supreme. Moreover, the goblins have a stranglehold over the Ministry's finances. Frankly, I think we should get as much business as we can done today and then use the goblins to purchase a home somewhere and plan on being out of sight until we have decided our next moves."

Harry nods. "Makes sense to me. Do we have any idea what part of the country we intend to settle in? I was kind of hoping we could be out in the country where we can set things up how we like. Maybe see if there are wards we can have the goblins put up that will let us practice magic. It also occurred to me that we should probably try to hire a tutor for the summer so you can challenge the first year classes this fall, otherwise if we go to Hogwarts we will be in different years. Which would kinda suck."

After finishing his own breakfast and a quick shower of his own, Harry and Alice make their way to the ministry building via the floo network, some kind of fireplace transport thing that Harry decides is three parts terrifying to four parts annoying. Closing in on the line before the front desk, they both do their best to keep the smirks from their faces at the conversation that surrounds them of general irritation at Gringotts. After twenty minutes, they are waved forward by a bored man in Auror robes sitting at the desk. "Please place your wands in the scale one at a time, sign the parchment that comes out of the slot when your wand is on the scale, and state your name and the reason for your visit to the ministry."

Harry answers as he is picking up his quill. "Harry Potter, I need a meeting with Madam Bones concerning the situation at Gringotts as soon as possible."

The Auror looks up in shock as the tumblers begin to fall into place concerning the announcement made to Dumbledore in front of Gringotts the day before.

Alice doesn't waste any time, with her wand and statement coming on the heels of Harry's. "Alice Liddell Potter, I am with him though I have a need to speak with Madam Bones independent of his reasons."

The poor Auror doesn't even know how to respond to this, and after a couple of minute wait they are being escorted to the office of the head of magical law enforcement by a tall black man, wearing an interesting combination of magical robes and various bits of African ethnicity thrown in, such as his hat, and bits of visible jewelry. He introduces himself as Auror Shacklebolt. "Well, Harry Potter. I knew we would be seeing you here in the ministry sooner or later, but I wouldn't have expected to see you for a few years yet when it comes time for you to take your seat in the Wizengamot." As he speaks, he slowly leads Harry and Alice through a veritable sea of interested bystanders who have been keeping an eye on the both of them since they explained why they were here at the front desk.

"Sorry to disappoint, but as I understand it I won't be getting any seats. The goblins told me some dumb law and my magical guardians ambivalence stole that from me."

"Who is your magical guardian?"

Harry's lips compress into a fine line that speaks volumes of disgust. "Albus Dumbledore."

"Oh. Sorry, then. In any case, here you are. Sit here for a moment while I see if she is busy." Shacklebolt then steps lively to the office door, distancing himself quickly from what had been becoming a bit awkward.

Within a few minutes they are being led into the office of Madam Bones. A rather formidable looking woman, with a monocle on one eye. Perhaps just a bit more gray hair than the skin around her eyes would warrant.

"Mr Potter, and... Mrs Potter. Now I am just betting there is a story there involving emancipation because if there isn't we may have even more problems than I originally anticipated."

Harry turns white, not having expected to be knocked to his back foot immediately upon entry. Alice is having none of it. "While the story may well be amazing, it is unfortunately none of your business unless you can somehow show cause for it to be investigated. As you well should know."

Madam Bones ceases her shuffling through paperwork and centers her monocled eye on Alice. "A young woman disappears for over a century and when she does finally reveal herself to the world, it is to snag our most eligible bachelor a few years early and then give me cheek in my own office." Her eyes then go from severe to hiding laughter as Alice continues to stare back, supremely unconcerned. "Ollivander is an old friend of the family and stopped by the office last night. You might not know this, but your disappearance was one of our oldest unsolved mysteries. He gave me what he had, and we brought your file out of mothballs. Not that you are in any trouble, but just so we can close the file would you like to explain where you were for the last hundred or so years?"

Alice feels it would do this conversation some good if Madam Bones felt obligated to take them seriously. So after raising a perfect eyebrow to harry, as though requesting permission, she begins.

"I spent it trapped in a mirror. The Mirror of Erised, if you are curious. Sadly, the mirror did not survive my obtaining my freedom, nor did the professor that Voldemort (Bones gasps at the casual mention of this name) was possessing at the time I became free less than two weeks ago. Or perhaps you would be more interested in the room sized Cerberus or house sized Devil's snare or the other traps that were left in the third floor corridor of Hogwarts last year. Or the fact that something was living in the forbidden forest subsisting by vampiracally surviving on unicorn blood, and that we know this because Harry was sent into the forest one night for a detention. Maybe the Troll that gained access to the school and destroyed a bathroom before students, first year students, were forced to deal with it last Halloween. Maybe you would be interested in the fact that Harry has been left in an abusive environment with magic hating muggles that despise him for ten years, and has the scars to prove it. Or the fact that Albus Dumbledore denied him his seat in the Wizengamot when that law was passed and poor Albus couldn't be bothered to bring him in to keep his hereditary seats. Or maybe, just maybe, you are more interested in the fact that Albus has been using a mail redirect on Harry denying him access to any mail from Gringotts or anywhere else in the magical world, and the goblins have taken this poorly and are responding by breaking the man as publicly and irrevocably as they can manage within the law, and are using the whole thing as an excuse to close accounts and cease dealing with any number of supposedly former death eaters that they have decided are really not worth the trouble. We can spend time talking about any or all of these things, Madam Bones. As you are the expert, may I ask if you have a preference?"

Bones' eyes at this point are wide open, her monocle having fallen to dangle on its chain. She wasn't sure what she was expecting here, but this wasn't it.

"For the sake of my sanity, let us start with current events. Harry is, I take it then, the reason that Gringotts appears to have lost its collective mind?" Bones at this point has a quill and parchment out to take notes with.

Harry responds. "Not really. I went into Gringotts yesterday morning and spoke with the Potter accounts manager for the first time ever. As soon as that happened, the rest of the day was like watching dominoes fall. Dumbledore sealed my parents will and set up a mail redirect on me so the goblins would have no way to contact me with their copy. We are not sure all the reasons for this, but we do know that my parents made it very clear in their will that Sirius Black was not the secret keeper. In fact, he was my magically sworn Godfather who, according to what the goblins have been able to find, was thrown into Azkaban without trial for what, eleven years now? Additionally, we know that Dumbledore was a signatory to the will, so he knows all this. We also know that both my parents had lists of people I should go to if they died, and I didn't go to any of them. In fact, Black was at or near the top of both of their lists, second only to the Longbottoms in my mothers will. The top on my Fathers. So their wishes were completely ignored. Somebody, while I was growing up, would come around every once in awhile and Obliviate, we think, anybody that was trying to help me with my home life. At the very least I have a long string of teachers and school counselors growing up who swore that they were going to try to help me and then as soon as they started making progress they would forget about me altogether and stopped believing me anymore. They didn't even believe their own eyes anymore. Instead of being abused, all of a sudden I was clumsy. Instead of being starved, I was a picky eater. It almost has to be Dumbledore or somebody he sent, because nobody could find me for ten years except the Hogwarts owl and then Hagrid, when Dumbledore specifically sent him for me. As if all that were not enough, the bearded wanker stole nearly half a million Galleons out of my trust vault in the last ten years using his access as my magical guardian, only instead of using it for my maintenance like he was supposed to he pocketed it and left me to getting beaten while living in a cupboard. At this point, most of what he could do is I think handled. Thanks to a welcome, if unintentional, soul bond between myself and Alice I am I guess married and considered an adult now. So the bastard can't do to much more to me. But since some of this at least should be against the law, I thought it would be worth it to come in and plead my case to somebody that might not forget later. In case he tries again, you know? By the way, the curse breakers at Gringotts left the mail redirect on me, they said that it was the best proof I had and that after you had verified everything your people could take it off just as easily."

Bones nods. "True enough. Let me run a few tests." At this point she gets her wand out and casts a few spells on Harry, that cause unusual symbols to appear over his head. "Well, there is definitely a mail redirect. The magical signature though is muddled. It looks as though it isn't anchored to you directly though."

Harry gives a quick grin. Competence in the magical world is unexpected, but appreciated. "The Goblins ran a few more tests, and what they came up with is that the redirect is part of the wards on the house I was living at until recently. It reinfects me whenever I go back there and takes almost a year to fade off of me. As for the magical signature, that I couldn't tell you. I do know that Dumbledore really wants me staying in that house though."

Alice has a slight smirk pass across her face. "No, Harry. From what you have told me he doesn't stress you have to stay in that house, he stresses you have to stay with those people. Now my knowledge of magic is spotty at best but Madam Bones, is there a reason besides illegal blood wards for someone to need to stay with muggles to maintain wards? While we are at it, the fact that he has been the only one with a magical core living there would mean that these blood wards were tied to him as a power source. When he was eighteen months old. For eleven years so far. Even if we ignored everything else, wouldn't tying an infants magical core to something as volatile as blood wards be grounds for dismissing a headmaster from his duties?"

"Indeed yes, I suspect it would be. We will need to go to that home and check this out I think. With witnesses. Lots of witnesses. Harry, would you mind if I use a few minutes to get some boots moving on some of this and then put together a group to head to your old house to check things out there? Just stay in my office and don't fool about with anything."

With that, she stands and hurries out the door.

Harry scoots his chair closer to Alice and she drops her head against his shoulder. "Whatever else we do for the next few days, I'll need access to a potions and alchemy lab soon, Harry. I am not running low on any of my concoctions, but I need to start the process to brew up replacements as some of them take an exceptionally long time to produce."

"Been meaning to ask you, actually, how do you brew stuff so powerful? The stuff you make does things I have never even heard rumors of before."

She smiles as she settles in against him while he wraps her up in his right arm. "The muggles show us the way if I am going to be honest. Everything I brew is designed to work for me. It is custom brewed to work with my anatomy, my hormones, what passes for my magical core. The muggles have a thousand different kinds of painkillers. The magical community has one. One that is supposed to be what it needs to be for all of those people. No, the muggles have it right. When you custom make a potion for an individual you can get much more powerful results and oftentimes get those results using more common, and therefore cheaper, ingredients. They even tend to last longer on the shelf, because you don't need to put mitigating agents in to soften up less desirable traits in the potion. It is generally these stabilizing agents that cause the solution itself to lose potency over time. But nobody does custom potion brewing anymore because first off, it is expected that only a master brewer would even attempt it, and second, they can be dangerous to brew or even have on hand."

"Dangerous how?" While this is all interesting, Harry has a slight problem with the danger aspect of it all.

"Well, first the brewing process. The reason why potion brewing is considered such an exact science is because thousands of hours of experimentation and hundreds of test trials have shown that the potions brewed exactly that way will have close to the exact same effect on nearly anyone who takes them. Additionally, potions brewed to those specifications won't melt cauldrons or explode. The idea is to reduce it to the expected reliability of alcohol. We all know the exact effects of alcohol on the human body. While some people can have marginally higher tolerance than others and body weight can play a factor, the amount of alcohol in a persons blood will result in effects that are quite specific, repeatable, and nearly ubiquitous across the breadth of humanity. In order for the International Confederation of Wizards to sign off on a new potion for general consumption and sale to the populace it needs to either pass the alcohol equivalent trials for reliability, or be so heavily based on one that is that there is basically no difference between the two." She squirms a little in her chair, closing her eyes as she speaks and capturing his hand in her own. "As for keeping them on hand being a problem, that is why I never leave even a mostly empty bottle of mine outside my skull pack. I have a few brews in there right now that all rely heavily on the fact that they were made for me, and use an ability that I possess to regulate them. I can concentrate and... disrupt magical energies in my body. I am unable to refocus them into something else, but I can introduce a self replicating error of chaos that will destroy whatever it was supposed to be doing and instead cause it to become merely inert energy. If you took my shrinking solution, even assuming it worked properly and didn't just shrink your ears or something, how would you get it to stop? Because there is no limiter on it. If I did not use my ability to stop it, I would shrink into nothingness. Additionally, the concoction that I imbibe to get to normal size is not actually a way to cancel the previous potion. It is actually just the opposite, a growth potion that allows me to set the size I wish to be by burning the energies it uses when I am the size I wish to be. If you took it, even assuming it worked at all, you would probably just grow until your body somehow couldn't handle the strain even with the magic, and then you would likely die. So you see, while they are useful and I need to keep stocked, they are not something that you can leave in the medicine cabinet for a guest."

Harry considers this for a while. "Yeah, I guess so. But theoretically, you could brew awesome stuff for me too once we worked out the basics of what makes me tick, right?"

"Perhaps, Harry. But you need to understand that I have very little formal training aside from listening in between classrooms and in peoples homes for a hundred and twenty some odd years. It took me a long time to figure out what I could do with me, and that includes being able to feel exactly what was going on as well as my own ability to stop in its tracks any reaction that seemed to be going poorly. Even then it took fifty years to work out most of it. So it might happen. But don't expect anything for awhile."

Harry nods. "That's fair." Then he thinks for a minute. "I wonder if this soul bond thing effects our magic?"

Alice goes to turn her head to look at him, then decides it just isn't going to happen because she is far too comfortable as she is. "In what way?"

"Well, I mean, if we really are joined at the soul somehow I wonder if that means that I will get your magic cleansing thing eventually, or maybe you will pick up the ability to talk to snakes like I can."

"You are a parselmouth? Interesting, and unlikely to be natural, strictly speaking. Both Slytherin and Voldemort were both known users of parseltongue, so your having the ability could be some kind of magical inheritance rather than something you were born with. Though if you are correct and it is something I can learn or be bestowed with in time due to the bond, it would make for a very secure way for us to communicate. As I understand it, practitioners have yet to come up with a way to use magic or any other means to translate it. Though, considering who was most recently known to use it there may be significant problems with making the ability widely known."

"Yeah. I guess. But it is something to think about."

-HaA-

After what seemed like a long time, but was probably less than half an hour, madam Bones shows back up in her office and leads Harry, Alice, somebody that she introduces as "Unspeakable Croaker" as well as a handful of Aurors including the African man from earlier, Shacklebolt, to the apparition area in the entrance to the ministry. Once they arrive, she turns to Harry.

"I have people looking into some of the other things you have mentioned, but most of that will keep. I want to get a good look at these possible blood wards before anybody can get rid of them. Can you give us your old address, Harry? We can all go there and take a peak."

Harry does so. With just a second taken out to tell him to hold on tight, while Shacklebolt does the same for Alice, they suddenly disappear and after a few seconds reappear at the park not far from number four, privet drive. Alice looks a bit green, but Harry immediately turns and vomits all over the ground, gasping out, "Oh my God, is there any form of magical transportation that doesn't suck?"

There is some good natured laughter at his discomfort, then Bones admits: "Well, you get more used to them as time goes on and you use them more. Also, it must be said that the convenience of most forms of magical travel really can't be beat. But no, you are right. Most of them are less than pleasant. If you could lead us now to your old home?"

"Yes, Madam Bones. It is this way." Harry then leads them the short three block journey to Privet drive. "This is it here. I really don't feel like dealing with these people again. Would you mind if I stay out here?"

Bones looks down at him fondly. "Of course, Harry. Don't wander too far though, in case we have questions to ask after speaking with the residents. Who should we expect to find there at this time?"

After a moments thought, Harry replies. "Aunt Petunia, my mothers sister. Her husband Vernon will be at work, he was responsible for most of my scars. My cousin Dudley will likely still be in the house at this time of day watching cartoons or sleeping in. He is responsible for the rest of my scars." he looks at all of the adult wizards there sadly. "I am sorry you had to come here. They are unpleasant people to say the least and they have no love for magic whatsoever. I've no doubt they will be rude, possibly even violent."

Shacklebolt snorts. "I think we can handle a bit of mean spirited talk from a couple of muggles, Mr. Potter. Just give us a few minutes, and we will see what we can find out."

Alice looks up at Shacklebolt, and quirks an eyebrow. "Attitudes like yours, Mr. Shacklebolt, are the reason that muggles that are aware of your world tend to hate you all for it. Nobody likes to be marginalized in such a fashion. People behaving like you are likely the reason Harry has been beaten."

With that, she turns to Harry and the two of them sit down upon the curb and lean into each other as the adults begin the process of inspecting the yard and Bones herself backed by a now frowning Shacklebolt walk up to the front door and knock.

Harry and Alice murmur quietly to one another as they sit there. The sound of Petunia shrieking in rage is cut off quickly, and after that it is only the occasional inquiry from one part of the investigation team or another. After about twenty minutes, they begin the process of digging some rune covered rocks out of the yard near the corners of the property, while inside Harry can hear Petunia now speaking as though in a trance, telling all about how Harry arrived on the first of November after his parents death, in a basket wrapped in a blanket with a note that claimed that if they did not take him in, they were likely to pay the price in blood. When asked, Petunia told them where to find the note as well as all the times that Harry had been beaten, starved, bullied by her son, or in any other way abused. In all, the questioning of Petunia would go on for nearly two hours, long after the bulk of the team had already left to take the ward stones back to the ministry to fully investigate them, less the two that went to Vernon's place of employment to pick him up and question him as well. When they are finally done, Bones comes back out of the house shaking her head in disgust.

"Harry, Alice? Lets get you two something to eat and back to the ministry so we can see what else has been happening with the other things you brought up while I was dealing with this. I have left Petunia and Dudley stunned in the home, we can send some Aurors down to pick them up when we get back to the ministry. I am... disinclined to be around them at present."

With that, the group used apparition, the wizarding name for teleportation, to appear in Diagone Alley. Although this time, Harry managed to avoid throwing up.

After a light lunch at the Leaky Cauldron during which nobody trusted themselves to say anything important for fear it would end up in the gossip columns of the next daily prophet, then a quick floo trip back to the ministry, Bones led them all to her office and then began sending Shacklebolt out to retrieve the people one at a time that she had sent off to do this and that.

"I wasn't able to get everything investigated properly today, I had to move on the things that might still have incriminating evidence lingering. So to start with I sent some Aurors as well as borrowing a couple of researchers from the department of mysteries to do the annual inspection of the Hogwarts castle and grounds, paying special attention to the third floor corridor. Unless they find something truly outrageous, we likely won't hear from them until tomorrow. It is a lot of ground to cover in a single day, especially considering that if what you say is true they are unlikely to get a lot of assistance from the staff. Any who knew about things like that being kept in a school for children would be culpable."

Shacklebolt at this time comes back in with a rather small bespectacled young woman who, while wearing Auror robes, is obviously some kind of book keeper or desk jokey based solely on the three binders she is carrying in addition to a book bag and a couriers satchel. Her blond hair with streaks of midnight black has obviously been altered, though whether by muggle means or through magic Harry has no idea. "Ah, Auror Lepenski. Tell me, what have you discovered in records concerning the claims of Mr. Potter here?"

Auror Lepenski gasps and finds herself staring intently at Harry's forehead. After a moment during which Harry sighs and Alice rolls her eyes, Harry brings up his hands to move his bangs out of the way and allow her to see his scar. At which point she blushes, stammers a mumbled apology, and turns back to Bones.

"Yes, Madam Bones. It has been an interesting few hours and to be truthful, I expect that there is more to find. But the first thing you need to know is that I strongly expect that a lot of this paperwork, even as damning as it is, is actually back fill."

Alice turns to look at her directly. "Back fill? Might I inquire what that term refers to?"

Lepenski looks at Bones apologetically. Bones looks lost for a moment, then lowers her head, dropping her monocle again and holding her thumb and forefinger over her nose. "I do apologize, Lepenski. It has been, all thing considered, a rather nerve wracking morning. This is Alice Liddell Potter. The two are married by way of a soul bond, checked the self updating records before we left this morning. Then I buried the knowledge under a need to know ban. If you weren't giving knowledge to her husband while she was in the room, I probably wouldn't be telling you now and if you blab to anybody, it's your job. Alice, Back fill paperwork isn't something that we are proud of, but it does happen. The term just means that things were done without the proper paperwork and permissions being filed and then someone came along afterward and filled out the paperwork as though it had been done correctly. At the time when most of this paperwork was being filed we had just gotten out of a state of defending against you-know-who and a lot of things got back filled because the ministry was in chaos. Please continue, Lepenski."

Lepenski, whose eyes had widened almost comically at the knowledge that Harry was already married, nods and continues after pulling out a parchment that she has filled with notes.

"Yes, indeed Madam. First, the wills. These were squashed by the Wizengamot. No record on exactly who did so, but the magical signature on the parchment itself when it was filed bears an eighty percent or better match with that of Albus Dumbledore. I have it down in the D.O.M. Now and some specialists are checking it along with most of the rest of the documents I am going to discuss, but really considering the time frame involved in order for it to be an eighty percent match it has to be an exceptionally powerful wizard or it would have faded a lot more by now. Given who was here at the time, had access, and had motive, it almost has to have been him. I still can't access the wills that were filed with the ministry, but after you and I spoke I sent a recruit to Gringotts to formally request a copy of both wills in an effort to get to the bottom of this. They sent back a missive that they would be happy to forward those along as soon as Harry Potter had given them leave to do so. Once we have them, I expect the next bit will be a lot easier to prove. The 'trial' of Sirius Black."

Bones looks up from her own notes. "I take it there is some truth to Mr. Potter's claims then?"

Lepenski looks almost apologetic as she glances at Harry. "Yes and no. According to the official court records there was a full trial convened. Records that were hidden behind a need-to-know ward and a notice-me-not on the cabinet they were in. Again I suspect these records were back filled by somebody, though I don't believe in this case it was Dumbledore. Based on the penmanship on this one my Galleons are on Barty Crouch."

Bones' eyes widen slightly. "By the book Barty, back filling paperwork? I knew he hated death eaters, especially after what happened with his son, but I had no idea he would stoop so low as to back fill paperwork. What makes you think it was him?"

Lepenski places one of her binders in front of Bones. "When was the last time you saw a full Wizengamot trial that had every scrap of paperwork attributed to it all done in the same handwriting, using the same pen, and likely all done within two hours if my spell work is correct. Also, you should know that in that back fill it is claimed that he declared he was guilty under veritaserum. According to the arrest record, he was quoted as having been nearly catatonic, claiming that it was all his fault, and breaking into laughter when he got excitable. Described as a "Soulful mad cackle" in the report. But here's the thing. Veritaserum is a highly controlled substance in the ministry. It requires three levels of paperwork to get it released from the dispensary, one of which has to be signed by a department head, and if it isn't used within four hours it is supposed to be returned to the dispensary. None was released within two days of the supposed trial, either way. If there was a trial, nobody used legal veritaserum during it. That alone should get him a mistrial, even if I am wrong and there actually was a trial. According to the maintenance records, courtroom ten, the courtroom supposedly used for the trial, hadn't needed cleaning that day because it hadn't been used. Finally, according to he boat master journal for Azkaban for that year, someone under a hood had been taken to Azkaban and locked up in high security two days before that trial even took place. Now, there was a lot of traffic at that time going to and from Azkaban. But there was never another hooded prisoner, and there was never a listing for Sirius Black. Unless fairy folk dropped him off there, somebody shoved him there without trial and then back filled to cover their ass."

At this point, Bones has seen enough. Canceling the privacy wards and raising her voice to be easily heard outside her office, she calls for Shacklebolt once again.

Opening her door and sticking his head in the office, "Ready for the next one?"

"No, I think in all good conscience we need to act on this one now. I need you to go collect Fudge. Tell him..." She ponders for a few seconds, then smiles a rather wolfish smile. "Tell him that I have evidence that will allow him to right a great wrong, make himself look great, and make his predecessor look like something to be scraped off the bottom of a shoe. Lepenski, could you take Harry and Alice here down to the cafeteria? Maybe get them some ice cream or something? This is going to take awhile and Harry Potter being here will only make Fudge want to smooth all this over even more."

The ice cream was delicious, though Harry was not a big fan of the looks he kept getting in the ministry. The less annoying ones were people that were curious who he was, but didn't put a lot of thought into it, or at least didn't stare at him if they did know. But the others, there were a few that stared. Stared and sneered, and seemed to hate him for no reason that he could tell. None of them wanted to talk too much, since there were far too many ears in close proximity. As they ate their ice cream, Alice slowly put her hand on his thigh under the table. The comfort it provided was enough to make it to the end of their afternoon snack under such scrutiny, and then the three made their way back to Madam Bones office to find out what was going to be happening.

-HaA-

Authors note.

Another one down. Setup has one more chapter, maybe two. Then we get to kick this thing into high gear. Sorry there hasn't been a lot of action yet, it's coming. I promise.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Can't we all just get along?

The walk back to Madam Bones' office is short, but not quite short enough for Harry. At this point it seems that it has become known that he is in the ministry, and further based on some of the murmurs that they are hearing as they walk, people are starting to put together that he is somehow involved with the fiasco taking place at Gringotts. Nobody quite decides to put him on the spot over it, but it is pretty obvious that a lot of the witches and wizards they pass are giving more than a little consideration to doing just that. When they enter the Auror offices things calm down considerably. Magical or not, doing things which could be considered rude to a hero child in front of a bunch of cops is a good way to get attention you don't want. Shacklebolt sees them coming from his post just outside of Madam Bones' office and sticks his head in the door for a moment, then waves them over.

"They are still deliberating in there. Madam Bones asked me to pass along a request that you make a quick trip to Gringotts to get those wills sent along, so we have something to back up our claims besides potentially faulty ministry paperwork."

Alice and Harry look at each other for a moment. Then, as though a consensus has been reached despite the fact that not a word has been said, Harry turn back to Shacklebolt. "Of course. Though it might be awhile. Getting in and out of the bank right now is likely to be difficult for me, and I needed to do some business there today anyway. Between the two things, this could take awhile."

Shacklebolt looks pensive for a moment. "I would like to offer you an Auror escort, but to be honest we are stretched pretty thin today, and Bones wants me here and Lepenski looking through any new information that has come in. Since you both are technically considered adults though, I can probably authorize a portkey to the steps of Gringotts and one for the return to the ministry's atrium if you think that would help."

Harry looks at him blankly. "What's a portkey?"

Alice gets a slightly grim smile. "More wizarding transportation. Supposedly even less pleasant than apparition, though I cannot verify that myself. I have witnessed their use many times, Auror Shacklebolt. I believe that such a thing would be of great help today. Thank you."

Shacklebolt smiles back. "Wait here a few minutes while I set it up. Don't go in the office, you will just mess with what is a pretty sticky negotiation. Dealing with Fudge when the question has any possibility of affecting his poll results is like trying to wade through a quagmire of his namesake. A quagmire full of poisonous vermin."

With that he leaves, only to return ten minutes later to find that Harry and Alice have sat down on the floor against a wall, legs crossed and leaning against each other. Eyes shut, and motionless aside from breathing. Shacklebolt laughs.

"Look lively you two. Here is your portkey. It is active now, so take it and I will tell you the activation words once I am not holding it anymore." He then hands Harry a small length of soft rope. "To get to the bank, the activation word is "Dragon-vault" All one word. The trip back activation is "Ministry-atrium-bound" again, all one word. Make sure you are both holding on tight when you say it and don't try to use this thing inside the bank proper or anywhere in the ministry except in the atrium on the street side of the visitor check in desk. Both Gringotts and the ministry are warded against portkeys and it would make for a very short and final trip if you did. I generally find it is a good idea to leave the thing in a pocket until you are ready to use it, so if something happens and someone says the password even with as odd as we make them, the thing won't accidentally activate in the middle of a sentence."

Both Harry and Alice can see the wisdom in this, so Harry shoves it in his pocket, and after thanking Shacklebolt they both start the walk to the atrium.

-HaA-

Their arrival on the steps of Gringotts is noted by a long line of dissatisfied customers that seems to stretch nearly the length of the alley. The two duck into the bank and are immediately stopped by a squad of six armed goblin guards, one of which is holding an exceptionally long scroll and speaks without bothering to look at them.

"Name?"

"Harry Potter, sir. I need to speak to my accounts manager, Grimknott."

The goblin then looks up to Harry and smiles a toothy grin. "A wizard who knows what to do with his enemies. At last. Yes, go on in. May the sparkle of your gold entice more of your enemies into revealing their tender underbellies."

After finding a younger goblin who has been apparently press ganged into wizard and witch wrangling duty, they are quickly taken back to Grimknott's office.

The old goblin laughs uproariously when they walk in. "Harry, Alice, how can the goblin nation help you today?"

Harry gives a slight bow and gestures towards the door. "Grimknott, why are there so many people waiting to get into the bank? Did Dumbledore do business with all of them? Did Voldemort? How is this even possible?"

Grimknott's smile is infectious. "Neither. Most of these people won't have to do anything but listen to a bit of a speech as to why they had to come in and for us to offer them an apology and compensation courtesy of the Malfoy vaults. Most of them are just parents or guardians of people that have sent children to Hogwarts since Dumbledore became Headmaster and paid directly from their vaults to the Hogwarts vaults. If that wand waving fool can break the law to make us look terrible to a client, then we will work within the law to make the world aware of what a wretch he really is. In any case. How can we help you today, Mr. Potter?"

Harry can't help but giggle a little at all of this, and even Alice's usually imperturbable countenance is graces with a wicked smile.

"Well, the ministry wants copies of my parents wills, and we were hoping that we could talk about buying property today. Somewhere off the beaten path, because I don't think I am going to be universally loved after all this."

Grimknott nods. "Probably a very good plan, Mr. Potter. Things will die down soon enough. The wizarding paper, the Prophet, will undoubtedly vilify Gringotts, and will probably publicly shame Dumbledore, especially if some of the rumors I hear coming out of the ministry have some truth to them. But I doubt that you will survive completely unscathed, particularly among the leftover Death Eater population. I looked into this a bit this morning, and I can recommend either a place in the country away from everything, I have a few of those we can look at, or any number of potentially fine residences within muggle communities. What it really comes down to is how close do you need to be to shopping and such, since I doubt you are up to apparition quite yet."

Harry and Alice look at each other. Again, seeming to reach consensus with no words being spoken. Then Harry turn to Grimknott again. "You make a good point, Grimknott. But we really do wish to live off the beaten path. Hopefully with wards that will allow us to practice magic without anyone getting annoyed with us. How tough is it to get hooked into the floo network? It isn't my favorite way to get around, but it seems like it would be an easy solution to the problem."

Grimknott seems a little disappointed. "The floo network is maintained by the ministry, but my experience is that getting such a permit is not difficult. The floo network does introduce a security risk however, since in order to make it useful we have to punch a hole through the wards."

Harry thinks for a moment. "Only if the floo is in the house. If we stuck it in an outbuilding near the house under its own wards, then I think it would work. We can try to come up with a rock solid plan for this later. For now, what do you have for us that would allow for a basement magic practice area, a separate basement potion and alchemy lab, a few bedrooms, and hopefully at least some land we can do what we want with?"

With that, the three begin looking through folders of properties, discussing the pros and cons of each for a couple of hours before deciding that they really should get back to the ministry. So after collecting notarized copies of the wills and a quick, if decidedly unpleasant, return trip to the ministry they once again find themselves approaching Shacklebolt who is still standing outside Madam Bones office only now is wearing the resigned look of someone who, all things being equal, would probably rather be fishing just now.

As soon as he sees them coming, he brightens a bit and waves them over once again.

"She is done speaking with the minister, and he has decided to make a big splash with this including reporters from the Prophet and the trial for Black to be open to the press. Then he scurried off to go do whatever it is that he does that keeps him in office. He left his senior undersecretary, Delores Umbridge here to straighten out the details with Madam Bones."

His voice drops to a near whisper and he leans down to speak.

"Alice, you were right to rub my nose in what I said at the Dursleys home. I don't consider myself anti-muggle, but when dealing with lawbreakers what bias I have can peak out from behind the curtains a little. But you need to understand that Umbridge is that biased. She is a pure blood, and has parlayed that one fact and a viper's sense of fair play into a well respected position here. She will respond poorly to a dressing down from anybody, and she can hold a grudge for years. I would recommend that you listen more than speak when you go in there, but you do what you will. I am not laying down law, merely offering advice. Now, are you ready to go in?"

Two nods later, and Shacklebolt opens the door. "Madam Bones, Madam Umbridge, I present Harry Potter and Alice Liddell." He then shuts the door, and Harry can't help but notice that he has made it a point to put himself on the outside when he does so.

"Well, as I live and breath. Harry Potter." Delores has on an unusual robe, in style it almost looks like muggle clothing from near a hundred years ago, except muggles over the age of ten would never be caught wearing an all over bright pink the nauseating shade that she is. Her smile appears a bit forced, but still genuine. Whether that is because she is happy to see them or is happy to get to the bottom of her current problem, he has no idea. She is not a tall woman, and goes a bit past pleasingly plump, but isn't wholly unattractive until you look at her face and realize that she has less warmth in her than the giant pink toad that she faintly resembles.

"Now that you are here, perhaps you can explain to me what exactly it is that you have done to stir up those wretched goblins so? Requests for the ministry to intercede on peoples behalf have flooded my office for nearly two days now, and enough really is enough."

Harry looks at Bones, who is glaring at Umbridge as though attempting to remove her skin with her mind. "Madam Umbridge, the problems at Gringotts are not the fault of Harry Potter, unless you believe the goblins are letting our children set their policy now, nor does it have anything to do with why you are here."

Umbridge offers a little giggle hidden behind her hand. "But of course it is why I am here. Black is guilty, everybody knows that and a new trial will only confirm it. But if you want him to get the chance at that trial..." She turns to face Harry directly and her face loses all attempt at civility and charm. A great pink wrath with a face twisted in hate barks out: "Then you will stop this nonsense you stirred up in Gringotts before the end of business today, I don't want to hear any more about it."

Harry jumps back, hand instinctively going for his wand. Bones sees this and stands.

"Harry, please sit. You are safe here. Nobody that doesn't want to spend time in my holding cells awaiting their trial is going to harm you in any way."

Nobody in the room noticed Alice move half a step towards Umbridge and put her right hand behind her back.

Umbridge looks back at Bones, her face registering shock. "Did you just threaten the senior undersecretary of the minister of magic with incarceration on your own authority? How could you be so foolish? I'll have your job for this!"

Bones looks at her as though she left a slime trail getting to her chair. "No, Madam Umbridge. I didn't threaten you with incarceration."

At this Umbridge breaks into a wide smile. "That is so good to hear, I would have hated..." At this point she gets cut off.

"Rather, I promised an eleven year old boy that if anybody was abysmally stupid enough to hurt him in front of the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for no reason other than his being unable to dictate the policies of another nation, than I would see justice done. Now, obviously nobody here is that stupid. So by that logic, I couldn't possibly have been talking to or about you. Now could I? Still, I think having my position threatened has made me no longer wish to deal with you today. We will handle this ourselves and you can explain to the Minister why you have no idea what the itinerary is on this moving forward. Good day."

Umbridge snarls. "I am not going anywhere. You need me to get this done and I have things the ministry needs handled."

Bones once again allows her monocle to fall, and places her thumb and forefinger on the bridge of her nose, as though doing so will somehow make the noxious pink terror and the headache that she is spawning go away.

Alice decides that she has had quite enough of this.

"Madam Umbridge, if I might inquire, what exactly do you expect Harry to do?"

Umbridge is turning a darker shade of pink than her atrocious outfit, and is well on her way to achieving a complexion that is some kind of red or purple. "I expect him to call off his little green dogs and allow the upstanding wizards who have done business with them for generations to continue to do so!"

Alice quirks an eyebrow at her. "Forgive me if I am mistaken, but would it not be the case that international relations would be something that the ministry should concern itself with?"

At this, Umbridge storms to her feet, which might have been more impressive if she were more than only a few inches taller than Alice, and screams: "That is what I am doing you wretched little girl, now get out of this office or I'll have you in chains!"

Bones is getting up, but doesn't quite manage to open her mouth before Alice speaks again. Her voice has yet to change, still the somewhere between bored and disdainful that has been her tone throughout. "If the most imaginative problem solving that you can manage involves screaming at children and demanding they do the job that you obviously cannot, then one wonders how you keep your position at all?"

Umbridge snarls and draws her wand, practically yelling "Stupefy!"

That is the point at which things seem to have hopped off the script for her, however. The first thing that happens is that somewhere between "stu" and "pify" Alice throws her rune blade, the vorpal blade, underhand and puts it to the hilt into Umbridge's wand hand. This neatly severs her wand into two pieces and passes through the webbing between her fore and middle finger without scratching a bone. Madam Bones yelling "STOP!" gets Shacklebolt to stick his head in the door in time to see madam Umbridge screaming and flailing her hand about as the blade that pierced it seems to fade into nothing. So intent are the people watching Umbridge that none of the adults see her quietly put it back in her pouch. Umbridge sits back down, holding her ruined hand to her chest as the shock sets in. Alice turns to Madam Amelia Bones, the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and witness to all that has transpired here. She places her hands together in front of her, and as calmly as if she was discussing the weather or the plot of an after school special, she begins to speak.

"Madam Bones. I am very sorry for engaging in violence in your office. When she pulled her wand on me I was in fear for my life and felt I had need to defend myself. I put myself in Auror custody."

Bones looks at Umbridge. Looks at Alice. A slight smile almost tries to paste itself to her lips, but she manages to beat it back before it can blossom. "I am sure that won't be necessary. Shacklebolt, could you escort madam Umbridge to St. Mungos to receive treatment, then return here? We have a few more things to get done today."

Umbridge stands, holding her still bleeding hand to her chest and clutching half of her broken wand in the other hand. Shrieking, she exclaims, "What? Yes that is necessary! I am pressing charges! I want this unrepentant delinquent to rot in Azkaban until she is too old to further pollute the gene pool!"

Bones looks at her for a moment. "You are telling me that on your authority as the senior undersecretary of the minister of magic that you are demanding that I take official notice and deal in a lawful way with what happened in this office just now?"

Umbridge stops on her way to the door. "YES, that is EXACTLY what I am telling you."

Bones nods. "Very well. Shacklebolt, new plan. Take her to St. Mungos, stay with her during treatment, and then bring her back here to await trial. The charge is pulling a wand and casting a curse on a minor and being stupid enough to do it in front of me. Grab a couple of trainees to keep you company. It will be good to remind them not to let the power go to their heads. On your way out, get Mad-Eye in here. I have a job for him, and send in Lepenski while you are at it. Maintenance too." The last bit is said as she is watching the trail of blood going to the door.

Umbridge pales as she realizes what she has done, and more what Bones had been trying to do when she made a token effort at sweeping it under the rug. "You, you can't do this to me! I am the Senior Undersecretary of the Minister of Magic! You..."

She gets cut off again. "Shack, just get her out of here before she leaks any more on my floor. Mungos, then a holding cell. Nicely if you can. But make it happen, regardless."

As soon as the door shuts and she has erected once again the privacy wards, Bones breaks out into a rolling laugh that trickles through the room like a thousand happy brass bells doing a dance. "Alice, please don't make a habit of winding up idiots in my office. If it happens regularly I will eventually have to do something about it."

Alice allows a slight smirk, and sits down again. Only now does she place her arms on the chair, thereby moving her wrists from the position they were in when they were waiting for chains.

"I am sure I have no idea what you mean, Madam Bones. But I shall endeavor to not cause problems in the future if it can be helped."

"No idea what I... Oh, you are such a treasure. We just need to find a way to use your powers for good!"

Alice looks just a touch hurt. "I rather thought that was what I was doing."

Harry is at this point trying so hard to hold in laughter he is starting to cry while his shoulders shake from the effort. "Well, I thought you were brilliant. For whatever that is worth to you."

"In point of fact, Harry, it means quite a lot. Thank you." With that, she scoots her chair over a foot and leans into Harry, the two of them letting the peace of contact drain away the remaining tension in the room.

At this point, the door once again opens and Lepenski looks in. "You wished to see me Madam Bones?"

"Yes, dear lord yes. Without your ability to shuffle all this paperwork I think I would lose my mind on days like today. The senior undersecretary will be unable to assist us with setting up the trial for Sirius Black due to the fact that she has recently attacked a minor in my office and will be spending time in Black's cell by next week if I can possibly swing that switch. Unfortunately that means that we are going to have to deal with all of the paperwork to make that happen internally. I need all the bells and whistles on this. As many members of the Wizengamot as we can manage, clearance to use veritaserum before the trial starts, and we will hold it Friday at two in the afternoon."

Lepenski looks up from the parchment she is scrawling notes on. "Why Friday at two?"

Bones looks up at her, and runs her eyes across to Harry and Alice, her lips quirking into a smug grin. "Because that is the last day that Gringotts is going to allow people that are being banned from their bank to empty vaults. Knowing the kind of people that are getting banned, I expect that they will not believe they will actually have to do so at all. My guess is that the bulk of these people that the goblins believe to be either Death Eaters or so deeply in Dumbledore's pocket that they cannot be trusted will be busy at that time. Go ahead and send the notice out Thursday after the bank has closed for the night. While you are doing all of that, get me the paperwork for transferring a prisoner out of Azkaban and into our holding cells here at the Ministry. It isn't freedom, but hanging out here for a couple of days has got to be better than the home of the dementors. I'll need that ready for first thing in the morning. Actually, I'll need all of it ready for first thing in the morning. I'll probably end up having to fill in Fudge by then, so make sure we have duplicates of everything."

At this time the door is thrown open and a man walks in that looks as though he might have been put together with leftover parts. A metal boot that sticks out from his robe makes an audible "clunk" sound as he walks and his left eye has been replaced by some kind of head band that holds a wildly spinning electric blue and enormous eye in place that seems to move at random about the room.

"Amelia? You wanted to see me for something?"

He shuts the door behind him, then places his back to the wall in such a way that he can see everyone in the room and if the door were to be flung open, it would first impact the metal boot that he has cocked out in front of him.

Amelia Bones smiles in greeting. "Why yes, Alastor. It is a highly unfortunate circumstance. Apparently Madam Umbridge, after attempting to threaten Harry Potter here, then threatening my job, and finally threatening young Alice," This was said while motioning to Alice, sitting in the chair. "Well, she apparently lost her mind. Attacked Alice, forcing the poor distraught girl to put the undersecretary in St. Mungos. Putting my keen Auror mind to the task, I have determined that she is probably under the influence of some kind of dark artifact, outside pressure from dissidents, or perhaps she is under the imperious curse. I don't know. But I want you and any two other Aurors of your choice to put together the warrants for me to sign so you can dig so far into her business that the next time she sneezes you'll feel her butt pucker. Are you clear on what I am asking?"

Mad-Eye looks at the trail of blood leading to the door and offers Alice a tip of an imaginary hat, to which Alice just smiles. "Just so there is no mistake, you don't want us to fiddle with the odds any, just find whatever is there."

Bones looks a little disgusted. "Of course not. We uphold the law, Moody. Even for wretched toad women that don't deserve it. Home, office here in the ministry, and any other property that she has a claim on. Be thorough. We've known she was dirty for years, this is the first time she gave us the opportunity. Don't waste it."

Moody's smile causes even Alice a moment of pause. "Yes ma'am. We'll get right on it. Have the paperwork for you in about half an hour." Then he stumps back out of the office.

Lepenski starts toward the door, then turns back around. "Oh, yes. Before I forget. I have some intelligence back from reports from Hogwarts and the D.O.M. If you have the time now."

Bones perks up a bit. "Oh, absolutely, lets hear it."

Lepenski takes a moment to shuffle paperwork between various bags and satchels. Then hands Bones a folder and begins reading the highlights from her notes parchment.

"First, the Wizengamot order to squash the wills of James and Lily Potter was definitely done by Albus Dumbledore. No reason given in the document. He has not been notified that this has been found out. They compared signatures with other things that we know for a fact he handled from the same time period and that eighty percent match hopped up to a ninety-seven percent. The back fill... You know what? Since the trial never actually happened, this isn't back fill. The forgery of the court documents for the supposed trial of Sirius Black were a perfect match for Barty Crouch, and the researchers down in the Department of ministries were able to tell me why there was no identifiable magical signature on it. Apparently not realizing that penmanship could be used to identify the origin of a document, the old coot used a muggle calligraphy pen and the magical signature gets warped going through the plastics used in those. That is why they are illegal to use on any official documents. Again, another layer in trying to cover his ass."

She passes over another small binder and begins going through a second page of notes.

"The rune stones collected from the property on Privet drive are definitely blood wards and a mail redirect. In addition to that they are designed to instil a kind of hopeless resignation in the muggles that lived there. Probably part of the reason you were treated so poorly, Harry. But mostly the researchers believe that they were designed to stop the Dursleys from attempting to better their station. To keep them there, so they would never feel as though they could move or switch jobs or anything. The last thing there they are having a hard time with. It seems like it is almost a reverse of the mail redirect. Much like the mail redirect infected Harry when he went there, when he was living there these ward stones would leech off of him some kind of protection he already has to aid them."

Her cheeks color slightly as she looks at Harry again. "They think it is probably an attempt to add to the wards whatever it was that enabled you to survive the killing curse. To say that they are interested in investigating this further would be putting it mildly."

With that she flips to the next page of her notes. "OK. Hogwarts. They are not yet done going over all of the castle yet, but they managed to find the bathroom that got wrecked by the troll and enough evidence to verify that a troll had been in it, and probably died there. But the big news was the third floor corridor. When they were heading down the hall they ran into Hagrid, the groundskeeper, who was taking a barrel of meat to something he called "Fluffy." After explaining to him that this was part of the summer safety inspection, Hagrid explained that the third floor corridor was off limits due to Dumbledore's business. You can imagine that this did not go over really well with the inspection team, so Hagrid is now down in one of the holding cells waiting to get booked for obstructing a lawful inspection of premises."

Upon seeing the sad look on Harry's face, Bones breaks in. "Did the big guy actually hurt anyone?"

Lepenski scans across her notes. "Umm... No. he refused to get out from in front of the final door in the corridor and they eventually had to use a petrificus totalus to freeze him up and a levitation charm to get the big galoot out of the way, but he didn't try to hurt anybody."

"Don't worry too much, Harry. It'll be a black mark on his record but it isn't likely to cost him his job. This fiasco will be mostly hitting Dumbledore I expect. Though, if it really bothers you the fine for obstruction is five thousand Galleons. He won't have it, but if you come in and pay it for him when he goes before the judge the black mark will be stricken and he won't even get jail time. Its a dumb law, but if pure blood nonsense that favors the rich getting to keep all of their illegal garbage is going to work for them, we might as well let it work for Hagrid too."

Harry nods. "Thank you Madam Bones. Hagrid is a good guy, he is just really loyal to Dumbledore."

Amelia nods. "We know, Harry. He has been the groundskeeper there for a long time."

Lepenski gives it a moment, then continues. "Anyway, When they got through the door they had to subdue a, I am quoting here, "Massive as hell three headed dog." To say that it was lethal enough that it shouldn't have been in a school is a bit of an understatement. It took five men almost an hour to knock the thing out, and that was casting at it through the open door that it couldn't get through. They didn't kill it, just stunned it, though they did remove it from the school. According to some notes they gave me they are thinking of trying to transport it to one of the dragon preserves on the off chance that it can be trained to assist in dealing with dragons."

Bones looks startled. "Its that big?"

Harry smiles a bit. "What? Fluffy? Nope, he's just a big softy. Ask Hagrid, he'll tell you ALL about it."

There is some good natured laughter at this, then Lepenski moves on.

"I guess you know this Harry, but then they found a trapdoor leading down into a devils snare of apparently epic proportions, a room full of flying keys that did actually manage to hurt one of the Aurors pretty badly. Dawlish is at St. Mungos getting three of them removed from his chest. I'll let you know when we get any more information on his condition. Having to play a game of giant wizard chess to cross a room was rather nerve wracking for them, but when they first tried to just ignore the thing Proudfoot got knocked in the head by a rook and they had to haul him to the infirmary. Nothing too serious, but he'll be out for a couple of days. The next room they found a dead troll. They still aren't sure if it was the same one that was in the bathroom or not, but if it is extraordinary measures were taken to preserve it. They estimate this one has only been dead about a week. After that was some kind of logic puzzle that was supposed to be used to get through a magical fire, but by this point they had been beaten up enough and just took out the wall next to the door to get past it. There they found the remains of a good sized standing mirror that had been busted all to hell and what they think is the remains of Quirinus Quirrell. He had been savaged by some kind of animal as near as they can tell, but he had also been possessed at the time. Something powerful enough to force a fleshy growth in the shape of a face to stick out the back of his head. There are pictures in the file I gave you. Don't eat before you look at them."

Amelia at this point is staring at Alice and Harry with her head cocked in an inquisitive manner. "Anything you two would like to add to the investigation?"

Harry responds with a deadpan tone and only the slightest of smirks. "He was possessed by Voldemort. We are ninety nine percent sure that he was surviving the possession by occasionally murdering unicorns in the forbidden forest to drink their blood. He actually tried to murder me once before in the year during a quidditch match when he used some kind of curse to screw with my broom. If they check the wand he had, they'll find the last curse that came from it was an unforgivable, the killing curse. Oh, and being dead a week probably makes him smell better. That garlic was a bit much."

Amelia manages to snort instead of laugh, but it's close.

Harry looks a little bit sad when he continues. "Honestly Madam Bones, it was self defense and I will take or swear anything you like to verify that, and I am sure Alice will too. But I still feel kind of bad he had to die. I don't really know how much of what he was doing was Quirrell and how much was Voldemort, or if he could have been saved if we could have gotten Voldemort out of him."

Bones takes a bit of pity on him. "I wouldn't stress too much on that one. For two reasons. First, in order for you-know-who to possess him fully enough to effect his anatomy like that, he agreed to the possession. But the second reason makes it all academic anyway. Unicorn blood that isn't given with the blessing of a unicorn is cursed. It acts like a magical life support almost. It'll keep you alive, but everything about you takes damage from it, which basically cuts what life you might have had left in half. If he killed more than maybe three or four unicorns like that, he was essentially a walking dead man anyway."

There is silence in the room for a few minutes while everybody absorbs that.

"Anything else, Lepenski?"

"Oh, yes, one last tidbit has come through. The Dursleys have all been interrogated thoroughly. While what they did to Potter was despicable, the truth is that they were not truly in their right minds thanks to the blood wards. The D.O.M. Team that investigated the whole thing recommend that you just obliviate them and take them home. Hopefully we can put together airtight evidence that it was Dumbledore that placed the rune stones, and then we can add Harry's treatment at the hands of the Dursleys to the long list of crap he has pulled in this mess. The circumstantial evidence of his involvement in the stones is already ridiculously high, and it got higher when we verified that his was the magical signature and handwriting on the note that was left for the Dursleys when harry was a baby."

Harry turns to Lepenski. "Hey, before you go, did you want the copies of the wills? We picked them up earlier."

Lepenski lights up with a thousand watt smile. "Yes, Harry. That would be wonderful. Madam Bones, would you like a copy before I leave?"

At her nod, Lepenski pulls out a few sheets of parchment, and with a wave of her wand the copies are printed. After that, with a nod, she leaves.

Madam Bones looks down at the two, then at the wills. Things are quiet for a few minutes while she looks at them.

Bones begins to mutter as she goes, and by the end she is nearly apoplectic. "That son of a bitch. I am sorry, Harry. I knew your parents well, your father worked for me and your mother was one of the brightest witches I ever knew and I was not at all above taking advantage of that when the department needed assistance with some charms or potions problem. But I had no idea that they had both listed me to be approached as a potential guardian. I just... I just didn't know. Well, that chance is gone I suppose. With the two of you being adults now and financially well off I expect that you will make it out of this fine. But if you ever need anything, let me know and I will see what I can do."

Harry turns to Alice, but starts speaking as though he were talking to Bones. "Well, actually if you are serious we could use a place to stay for maybe as long as a month. We are trying to purchase some property through Gringotts but between the purchase and getting it warded we are not sure how long that is going to take. We were staying at the Leaky Cauldron, but given the things happening in the Alley right now that may not be the best plan."

She smiles. "Absolutely. For as long as you need."

HaA

Authors note.

OK. Thanks for the encouragement peeps! It is always nice to hear. On the other hand, only about two thirds of this was originally supposed to be here. Pretty much things got derailed as I was typing along and Alice stood up somewhere in the back of my brain and explained that in no way was she going to put up with or allow Harry to have to put up with the fucking Umbitch. Probably not the last we have seen of her, but yeah. Alice no likey.

In any case, the next chapter will probably be awhile. These last two were quick due to my woman being out of town, but she gets back tonight. So, expect something in a couple of weeks.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Giant Problems.

Albus was quickly becoming frantic. Things had not gone this far wrong since Grindlewald had drinks with that ridiculous little Austrian muggle with the stupid mustache and honeyed tongue. After the bank yesterday he had spent the entire day in the Wizengamot chambers trying to rally support for sanctions against the goblins. Unfortunately finding that the fearful attitude that he had fostered in magical Britain that allowed the likes of Voldemort to run roughshod over them and allowed him to maintain a stranglehold over power as the one to go to when things have gotten bad has created a people that want to debate everything that effects them directly into the ground before doing anything. Declaring other sentient creatures as dark and passing laws that were simply despicable in the name of wizarding safety was no problem. They would do that all day. But threaten their gold or their own comfort, and all of a sudden it needs to be talked to death by the most cautious and conservative people on the face of the planet. The fact that the bulk of the Wizengamot are old men that are not beholden to Albus in any way that Gringotts would recognize through accounts held only makes things worse. Aside from a very few that Albus has done favors for in the past in the form of small loans or that have offered him enticements to see something passed through the Wizengamot the only people that seem to be truly backing his motions are all pardoned Death Eaters! His most ardent supporter in this is none other than Lucius Malfoy, and if you had told Albus a week ago that they would be on the same side of a Wizengamot decision in this lifetime he would have laughed at you. Five long hours later, when the last of the Wizengamot members have left and Albus himself begins the walk towards the atrium, the fact that the closed session did not allow for news from the outside to reach the members begins to show.

Everybody knows. Everybody now knows that he is the reason for Gringotts doing this. Everybody knows that he was the one that squirreled away Harry Potter and seemingly everybody now knows why they never received any responses to their well wishes to the boy over the years. Gringotts has apparently spent the entire day interviewing people that were caught up in this, and if they can confirm a lack of collusion with himself or Voldemort, the people are being told all the details and offered compensation for their time to the tune of five thousand Galleons that based on what was discussed in session today, Albus is willing to bet were transferred straight from the Malfoy vaults. The looks he is getting are the same looks that he witnessed Grindlewald getting during the trial. The answer is clear. The boy must be found.

Unfortunately, this has not been easy. Today he stopped by the ministry briefly to speak with Cornelius Fudge and that pink horror he keeps as his secretary to ask assistance with the Gringotts matter from his offices, and has since spent the day looking for the boy so he can drag him into the bank and smooth this over.

But he can't find the boy. His tracking charms seem to have all fallen off. The Weasleys haven't seen him, but eat up two hours of Albus' time worrying over Harry and offering to assist. Albus declines however. Until he knows what is going on exactly, the fewer people the boy talks to the better. The Grangers, Hermione's family, haven't seen him and wouldn't be of any use even if Harry somehow did find their home as they are apparently leaving on vacation to the continent within the hour of his arrival. He spends the entire day checking every muggle business, hotel, park, bridge, shed, doghouse and outhouse within five miles of Harry's home and comes up with nothing. Finally, in desperation at the end of an exceptionally long and frustrating day he stops back by Privet drive and finds two things that cause his heart to stop for a few beats. Firstly, the muggle family he expected to meet are not in residence. But secondly and far more importantly, he has to search the house to find this out because the wards are down. In fact, the ward stones themselves are gone. Dug out of the ground as though someone was planing to use the spots they were in for fence posts.

By the time he makes it back to the ministry, most of the offices are closed and the people have gone home for the day. But he does catch something from the mind of some squib in maintenance as he prowls the halls looking for evidence of what seems to be destroying his world. An amusing anecdote. Delores Umbridge, attacked and left bleeding in the office of Amelia Bones. Enough of a mess to require mopping thoroughly the office and the halls all the way to the atrium until the portkey to St. Mungos. Apparently she was there meeting with Amelia, some young girl Albus doesn't recall having met, and just the way his luck is going today of course, Harry Potter. Harry Potter in the office of Amelia Bones. This will not go well.

Upon his return to the castle, defeated in all his attempts to find Harry, tired, hungry, frustrated, and annoyed as he had finally broken down and tried to get some assistance and cannot locate Alastor for the life of him, he finds out that the Ministry Summer Safety Inspection happened today while he was out. Hagrid has been arrested. A five man team of Aurors and members of the department of mysteries, two of the five becoming hurt in the third floor corridor. The mere fact that it was a five man team and included D.O.M. Personnel is by itself proof that Harry has been telling tales, the team is usually two Aurors of questionable skill who lounge around the great hall for lunch and dinner, essentially getting a day off with free meals.

In his office late into the night, Albus writes letters. He will need to call in favors to the point that he may actually owe some to stop what is happening, but stop it he shall. He is, after all, Albus Dumbledore. While Harry Potter, when all is said and done, is a child that was left with his last living family and had his mail redirected for safety reasons due to the fact that they were muggles.

Or at least, that is what the people will believe when he is done. Anything else, even the blood wards that they undoubtedly know about if they have the ward stones, can be justified by the fact that it was all set up during a time of war. A war that he had a hand in ending, and he may have to remind a few people of that.

The situation at Hogwarts will be a bit sticky, but he has one advantage there that can't be taken from him. In the end, and admittedly against all odds, nobody was seriously injured. In fact nobody was significantly hurt at all, and the records from the infirmary will back him up. A few flying injuries, and the standard lineup of Quidditch problems but aside from that it was an exceptionally boring year for Poppy, the mediwitch that runs the infirmary.

As for Gringotts? If this is how they wish to play then truly, he need not try to clear his name through the goblins. Indeed that may be impossible. But two can play the game of winning through a smear campaign, and frankly nobody likes the damn creatures anyway. Making people hate them will not be difficult. He doesn't have to be loved unconditionally, just trusted more than the greediest creatures known to wizard kind. How tough could that be to orchestrate?

HaA

Harry wakes up laying on his back with Alice curled into him using his arm as a pillow. It is light out, but obviously still quite early. Thinking about last night he can't help but smile. They wrapped up things at the ministry not long after Auror Lepenski left the office, and were cleaning out their room at the leaky cauldron soon after. At Director Bone's suggestion they chose to leave the mail redirect on him for a while longer. Mostly because with no trace on him and the redirect still active to stop the owls, he was effectively impossible for Dumbledore to locate barring his pet phoenix, but using that bird would tip his hand as he is the only one in Britain that has one. That annoying get out of jail free card showing up where Harry is would be enough to establish stalker behavior, and possibly enough evidence to shovel some truth serum down the old goats throat according to Madam Bones. Dropping a quick note to Gringotts to send any mail that was going to Harry Potter or Alice Liddell to be care of Amelia Bones, and why, is the last thing they do before leaving the Alley. Then they all went to Bones Manor where Harry and Alice were formally introduced to Susan Bones, Amelia's niece and an orphan of the first Voldemort conflict. A Hufflepuff and a somewhat shy but polite and quite friendly redhead that Harry easily recalls from school. They did not spend a lot of time together outside of class and meals, but in that place simply not having any reason to suspect somebody puts them a step or two above standard.. Before arriving, Amelia, Harry, and Alice had a brief discussion about Susan and it was decided that she would be told everything that they could because when the two of them slept in the same room she was going to know something was up anyway. While a bit startled to hear that Harry was already off the market, she takes the news well enough. Finding out about the situation at Hogwarts and what was actually in the third floor corridor made her turn as white as a sheet. Well, a freckled sheet anyway. After dinner the children talked for awhile and then Harry and Alice went to bed while Amelia spent the evening and deep into the night in her office occasionally getting reports via the floo located there.

He can't help but gently stroke Alice's coal black hair as he lays there. Alice smiles, though does not move.

"I know you are awake." Harry whispers softly.

"I know that you know. If what you were doing bothered me, I would tell you." She wiggles against him a little, and he uses the opportunity to move out from under her some in an effort to get circulation back into his arm.

Harry smiles. While he doesn't really understand all the ins and outs of this soul bond that they seem to have, the near unconditional acceptance that seems to come with it is most welcome.

"We need to get up love. It is going to be a busy day, and we will probably need to go in to the ministry with Madam Bones if we want to have any chance to get in without trouble."

"No." Is her only reply.

"No? What do you mean no?" His question sounds a little hurt, but mostly curious.

How she can respond under her breath while still giving the impression of a halfway disgusted monotone, he has no idea. But she has perfected it. "I mean no, I am far to happy right now snuggling my man to have any desire to scurry about getting prepared for another grueling day of dealing with stupidity and corruption that began before he was born and was seemingly designed to plague him to his grave. Ask me again in five minutes." With that she nuzzles into his neck and gives the slightest of kisses. Harry smiles. He can wait five minutes. For her, he can wait years if she asks him to. "Yes, Love. As you wish.

At breakfast, Amelia has a few things to say.

"Well, I don't think you are going to need to worry about dear Delores for awhile, Alice. My men found evidence that she was accepting bribes and further it looks like she was a collector of some questionable artifacts. Any one of them might have been ignored as a curiosity or family heirloom and a fine plus registering the items would have seen her clear. Most of them weren't really that bad. But sadly for her, the collection Mad-Eye found hidden behind a basement wall in her home was four times the legal limit to be considered to be trafficking in dark artifacts."

Harry considers this between bites of porridge and sausage. "Do you think she actually was selling them?"

Amelia puts down her notes from the day before and looks at him directly. "Honestly Harry, I doubt it. But that doesn't really matter. The law exists both to stop people from buying and selling black market dark artifacts and as an attempt to keep people from storing lots of them together like she was. Many of them do not react well to being stored in close proximity to each other, and the law exists for the safety of the populace. She broke it, now if I can possibly manage it she will pay the price. Thanks to the many pure blood families with representatives on the Wizengamot and their own little collections, the law only allows for a month per item over that limit to be spent in Azkaban. Assuming I can get a guilty verdict she is looking at a little over six years. Some of the items she had were just bizarre, too. Even if they were not restricted to solicitors and the ministry, who needs a box of sixteen blood quills? The woman makes no sense even in her hobbies."

Alice perks up a bit. "Blood quills? I have seen these before. Some seventy years ago, before I was brought into Hogwarts my prison spent some time in the office of a Mr Carrow. He would pull one out of a safe for the signing of important documents. Betrothal contracts, land purchases, the occasional highly expensive item or service. He also used it on a little book that he pulled out when he wished to add or remove someone to his home wards, which I thought was unusual."

Amelia's eyes widen a bit. "Interesting. The only reason to use a blood quill on a ward list is for an added layer of security, but the kind of wards that a book like that would respond to are considered illegal due to their lethality. May be nothing, seventy years is a long time. But I'll have someone inspect the Carrow property ward schemes when the current crisis is over. Just in case."

Alice looks a little surprised. "You would investigate them based on a seventy year old rumor from a child you barely know?"

Amelia laughs, though she doesn't seem to mean to cause offense. "Following up on rumor and attempting to derive fact from what you find there is half of what an Auror does. But in this case, you should also know that when you-know-who was rampaging the country in the seventies and early eighties, a few of the Carrows hopped on his bigoted little band wagon. Then when the dark lord was put down, they managed to slime their way out of prison sentences using bribes and favors. I am not particularly biased by race, blood purity, or nationality. But the ones that got away always crawl to the top of my lists."

Alice frowns slightly. "That is curious. Things must have gone quite wrong in their family. The Mr. Carrow that I watched from the mirror would never be mistaken for an overly kind man, but he seemed honest and took care of his family as best as he could. Though I admit I witnessed him deep in his cups more than was properly healthy, particularly after I had heard that his wife had passed away."

Amelia nods. "Before my time, though not by as much as I would like. I take it you two are going to be coming to the ministry today? I ask because by ten we should have Sirius Black in the ministry holding cells. Also, there are good odds that Hagrid will go before the committee today, so you may want to stop by Gringotts and get the coin."

Harry looks up from the sports page of the Prophet, having grinned slightly to see that the Cannons, the quidditch team that Ron favors, almost won a game. Then he glances at Amelia and his grin fades. "Why does Hagrid get a committee? I thought he was to go before the Wizengamot for trial?"

Amelia lowers her eyes somewhat. "I thought so too, but when they were booking him last night it came to light that he is a half giant, and some imbecile decided to write him in as a half breed dark creature. That changes his prospects, and not for the good. The good news is that the five thousand galleon clause will still work to keep him out of Azkaban or from being executed. Lots of the old pure blood families from the time when these laws were penned had employees or slaves of one sort or another that would qualify, particularly Veela, and they wanted a way to save them if needed. The bad news is that Hagrid already has a black mark on his record. Now that his heritage has been revealed if this one isn't cleared it is likely that he will be executed."

There is the sound of a gasp from the doorway and then Susan walks in. "No, Auntie Amelia you can't let them kill him! He is probably the nicest employee in the whole school, or at least is as nice as Flitwick and Sprout!"

Amelia looks at Harry. "This is the world you are entering, Harry. Where in the premier school in the nation, two of the four that are the kindest, most helpful, and most protective of the students are also the two that the ministry would see thrown in prison for what they are. Are you sure you don't want to just clean out your vault and move to Tahiti or something?"

Alice shakes her head in disgust. The obvious nature of Flitwick as some kind of halfbreed clears the first question, she then inquires: "Who might be the fourth, if I may ask?"

Shaking her head with a slight smile, Amelia responds. "Poppy Pomfrey. The school nurse. You will never find a more dedicated, kind, and competent healer. There are some specialists that can claim to know more about given ailments but after twenty five plus years of dealing with accidental magic, miscast spells, quidditch injuries, the occasional dark curse, and assisting the light during the last war there is very little she hasn't seen and nobody that I would prefer to have looking me over after any kind of accident."

At Harry's somewhat wry look, she allows a bit of a smile to peek through the concern for Hagrid. "I know Harry, I know. She is also quite strict and can peel flesh with her tongue. Wait until the first time that you have been hurt, are in pain, and wish to be left alone. Listen to what she does to see to it that you get that time, and feel pity for whatever buffoon thought that their visit to you was too important to wait. In any case, I assume that the two of you would like to come down to the ministry today?"

As Harry and Alice nod and finish their meal, she turns to Susan. "Since they will be there and you wouldn't be languishing in a corner all day alone, I will allow you to come to the office today if you like Susan. That is, unless you had other plans. Otherwise you are welcome to stay at the manor and study, the house elves would be more than happy to keep an eye on you and see to your needs as normal I am sure."

Susan looks at the group, and replies. "I can come to the ministry with you if you would like, but I had plans today to go down to Diagone with the Hannah Abbot and her mum, if that is alright Auntie Amelia."

Amelia nods. "That would be fine, Susan. Perhaps when it comes time we will take our lunch in the Leaky Cauldron again today. Let the Abbotts know. About noon I should think. No promises, however. To say that a hornets nest was kicked over yesterday wouldn't be doing it justice. I may not be able to get away."

With all that decided and the house elves left with the cleanup, they floo to the ministry to see what the new day brings.

HaA

What it brings is boredom, Harry muses as he and Alice sit together on a tiny loveseat that Madam Bones transfigured out of a chair in the corner of her office.

Getting to her office was a bit of a challenge, because even coming in as early as she was she was stopped no less than twenty times by people that wanted her assistance, mostly concerning the Gringotts matter. But when she reaches her office she settles in to drink tea and read reports for three hours, dealing with the occasional note or barking out a response to the odd Auror head being poked through her open door concerning a question of protocol or orders of the day. It is nearly eleven before they hear the recognizable thunk sound of Moody stumping his way towards the office. After entering he closes the door and throes up a few privacy wards. Nodding to Harry and Alice he slumps into the chair in front of her desk after turning it so he can see all three other people and the door without moving his head. Amelia sits and waits, as though this is a bit of a routine with them. When he pulls out a flask and takes a swig of something that causes smoke to escape his mouth in little rivulets for a few seconds, Amelia's eyes widen, but she chooses to ignore it otherwise. In the harsh light of the morning sun the many scars on his face and hands stand out in sharp contrast to his otherwise weathered skin, and the bright blue eye that is his namesake never stops searching.

"We got him out, Bones. He is in cell sixteen, not to far from that half toad harpy you had us stick in there last night. But if you are right about him being innocent, the ministry owes him more than an apology."

Amelia frowns. "That bad is it?"

Mad-Eye nods. "Aye, worse. Worse than you think I am guessing. Ten years surrounded by dementors might have been bad enough, but they locked him up in the same section as the Death Eater prisoners even with his arm being free of the mark. He just spent ten years dealing with dementors, yeah. But whether that was worse than having to hear all about you-know-who and his supposed second coming direct from the mouths of the lunatics that brought him to power the first time and helped kill all of his friends is anybody's guess. We were running late because we had to get him cleaned up before we could bring him off the island. The other inmates have been chucking their... waste... at him through the bars for the length of his stay. It is amazing he is still alive at all. While he was taking his first bath in a decade and we were scaring him up so clean clothes, I took a look in the wardens office. There are orders in that desk signed by Barty Crouch to ignore any and all talk from anybody in that wing and keep in house any unusual circumstances that arise, reporting only to him. Been that way for ten years thanks to that order. Amelia, just what the hell is going on here? If I can tell in less than a minute that he is no Death Eater based on just what I saw, then the guards had to have figured it out. This could have been investigated years ago if not for that order from Crouch."

Amelia's face reddens in anger to the point that Harry becomes concerned for her health.

"We are going to investigate it now. I assume you brought back a copy of that order?"

Moody looks a little embarrassed. "Sorry, Amelia. The damn thing was charmed against copying or leaving the island. Not sure what kind of charm exactly, but my guess is that if it triggers it'll burn it up or vanish it. The eye let me spot it, gave me an idea what it was about, but I didn't want to risk destroying the evidence. I am a tad ham handed when it comes to that kind of thing. You'll need to get somebody down there better than me at dealing with that finicky crap if you want your evidence here in the ministry."

Amelia thinks for a minute, then scrawls out a note. "Take this to Unspeakable Croaker and grab Lepenski to hand forge a copy of it before Croaker or whoever he sends with you tries to clean it up, in case the worst happens. Escort them back as soon as you can and then we are going to get the warrants put together and put dear Barty under the same microscope we put your toad harpy under yesterday. I don't know why he would be doing this to Black, but even if we assume Black is guilty of something and the man was somehow justified, I can't ignore this. Oh, and Moody? No matter what happens out there you make damn sure those twits working at Azkaban know that this particular order is rescinded, and bring the paperwork back with you."

Moody nods and stands up. "Aye Amelia, I'll see it done."

Amelia glances towards the door, obviously thinking about something. "Moody, is Black in any kind of shape to receive visitors? As an example that I don't want leaving this office, if his magically sworn godson wanted to see him, would he be in any kind of shape to deal with it?" Her eyes flicker towards Harry for a moment and Moody's good eyes follows hers, then widens in surprise.

"That explains why the only time I saw him smile today was when we were on the boat and I mentioned to Jakobs that I had seen you in the ministry, Mr. Potter." He turns back to Amelia. "Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. I know what his answer would be. But whether or not a nights rest might be better first I couldn't tell you. Personally, I would let him get a couple of decent meals and a night with a dreamless sleep potion in him before I would expect him to pass for human again. But I ain't a healer. So what do I know?" Then he leaves the office.

Once he leaves, Alice is the first to speak. "Madam Bones, would we be allowed to send Black a note to let him know we would be visiting him tomorrow if that was what we decided?"

At her nod, Alice turns to Harry. "I know you would like to see him today, and I know that he would probably like the same. But if what I have heard of dementors is accurate, I think a day of hope for something to come would do a lot to help him. One day of thinking of tomorrow like it was a good thing could make all the difference to him."

Amelia can't help but agree. "She has a point, Harry. I know that you don't know Moody, so let me explain that if he believes that your godfather is in bad shape, the man was probably barely alive. Either physically or mentally he was probably on the cusp when they got him out of there. He might need the day before we give him any more shocks, and I will clear him for the dreamless sleep potion as well. It is probably a very good idea."

Harry is annoyed, but finally finds that he can't drum up a reasonable argument against their plan.

"If that is what we have to do, I guess that is what we do. Can I have a quill and a bit of parchment?"

HaA

Lunch at the Cauldron is pleasant enough, though they are forced to keep it short as they need to stop by Gringotts for five thousand Galleons and get back to the ministry by one thirty to sit in on Hagrid's meeting with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Taking a seat between Madam Bones and Alice, they talk quietly while waiting for the session to start. When Hagrid is brought in, his arms are chained behind his back, his ankles are chained so close together that he can barely walk, and he has a hood over his head that hides his face. His shoulders are slumped, and his head hangs low as though he is expecting that this is merely a formality before he is killed. As there is no chair in the room that will support him, he is forced to kneel before the committee and the hood is ripped off of his head. The first thing he sees is the committee that will pass judgment, and the second thing is the headsman and his bloodstained block and ax, just off to the side. He looks around as the committee is starting their speech, and though he doesn't find what he was apparently looking for, his eyes lock on Harry and he turns to the committee that is about to pass judgment. "Hey now, can we clear the children out? They..." He looks at the block and headsman again, then drops his head. "They don't need ta see this."

Looking startled at being interrupted in their deliberations, the man at the table seems to ignore Hagrid's request. "Rubeus Hagrid. You are brought before us today as an unregistered dark creature that felt it in their best interests to disrupt ministry business. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

Hagrid once again looks around the courtroom. Then, looking crushed, he turns to the man. "I was jus' doin' my job, yer honorableness. I was kinda hoping my employer would be here to defend me but he don't seem ta have gotten word."

The man at the table's expression shifts to looking as though someone has recently grated a lemon against his gums. "Yes, well, if he should feel unconcerned with your plight, then who am I to argue with such an illustrious recommendation."

With that the man on the committee raises a gavel, and Harry feels a sharp poke in his ribs. When Harry looks up, Amelia gooses him, causing him to stand up, saying "Ow!"

The man at the table stops and looks up. He is about to say something, then his face goes from one of disgust bordering on rage at being interrupted again, to one of caution as Amelia Bones clears her throat. "Harry Potter has something to say, Nigel. Do give him a moment, won't you?"

The man at the table, Nigel it would seem, stares with his eyes the size of jam lids at the boy that is walking toward the table. "Harry Potter. What would Harry Potter like to add to the proceedings?"

Harry stops in front of the table, digging into his robes for the pouch the goblins had sold him that afternoon, spelled to be able to hold and lighten a staggering amount of currency of any kind.

"Madam Bones told me that there was a law on the books that would make you have to strike this from the record and turn him loose if a five thousand Galleon fine was paid. I am here to pay that fine, so you can take your axeman and put him to work cutting trees or something. He won't have anything to do here today." With that, he starts pulling gold out of the pouch, counting as he goes.

The man sneers. "While that is true, Potter, it is dependent on this committee accepting the fine. Next time you have an opportunity to save a friend, perhaps you should consider acting as befits your station. Your gold is no good here today."

Harry stops. His face goes white. Has he just killed his friend over a crack about having the executioner in the room? He hears somebody from behind him stand. Then he hears Alice.

"Nigel, is it? Do you have a last name?"

The man looks past Harry at this annoying girl who has decided to intrude upon the proceedings. "Thornwood. Nigel Thornwood. Who the hell are you?"

Alice smiles. "Who I am is unimportant, Mr. Thornwood. Tell me, is yours an elected position or an appointed one?"

Thornwood looks confused, but answers. "Appointed. I have this position due to the Minister of Magic himself appointing me. What does that have to do with anything?"

Alice shakes her head slowly. "Nothing directly, Mr. Thornwood. Come along Harry, if we get to the Prophet soon we can have the story in tomorrows paper all about how the minister of magic appointed someone that clearly and for no discernible reason has decided that he hates and will not deal with the boy who lived. My guess is that he is a Death Eater or Voldemort sympathizer who escaped trial. We will have to let the paper know. It would be only right to do so.

The man's face becomes ashen. Harry tries to hide a grin as he begins to put his gold back in his pouch. "Wait, Mr. Potter. Perhaps I spoke hastily. A fine would be appropriate in this instance, I think."

Alice speaks again. "Mr. Thornwood, by chance does your committee set the amount of the fine?"

Thornwood again looks back at her. "Yes, but Mr. Potter is right, the standard is five thousand Galleons."

Alice raises an eyebrow. "If I may ask, where does the money go that is brought in by such a fine?"

Thornwood at this point is mostly looking confused. "The bulk of it goes to the department's discretionary funds. A small percentage goes to general ministry needs. Why does that matter?"

"Harry, I think that the fine today is ten Galleons. Otherwise I think we will spend the five thousand on advertising space in the Prophet to tell our story every day for the next year. Is that acceptable?"

Harry can't help but smile as he counts out ten and leaves them on the table. "Yes dear, I believe that will be fine. Did you have anything to add Mr. Thornwood?"

Placing his gavel back on the table and looking as though he would like to crawl in a hole, he responds. "N-no, I think that will be fine. Ten Galleons."

Harry pushes the ten gold across the table. "Thank you Mr. Thornwood. Would it be too much to ask if you would unchain my friend?"

Nigel motions to the man with the ax, but stops when Harry speaks up.

"No, sir. I would like you to do it. He scares me. But you and I, I feel that we are getting downright chummy now, don't you?"

Gulping, the man gets up and collects the key from the axeman, then unlocks Hagrid. Then Hagrid surges to his feet and steps towards Harry. Looming at his shocking eleven feet of height over the boy, and coincidentally Thornwood. Harry sees a yellow puddle start to spread from around the man.

"C'mon, Hagrid. Lets get out of here. Something smells."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

A moment of clarity.

Taking Hagrid back to the atrium so he can get to Hogwarts via a floo at Hogsmeade is a quick trip. Of course on the way Harry suffered through a record breaking (nearly rib breaking) and very heartfelt hug from the half giant, then the two went with Amelia back to her office where she made sure the door was shut and put up some privacy wards.

Once they are sitting, Harry sighs. "I wish we could tell him what is going on, but some of this needs to stay under wraps for a bit longer and he is just incapable of keeping a secret. Especially from Dumbledore."

Amelia nods at this. "I know, Harry. For that reason I think today is going to be your last full day at the ministry. I don't want to deal with the stubborn old goat trying to corner you here on top of everything else. We can use the floo connection to bring you in for specific things as needed, but I think it would be a good idea for the two of you to stay at the house for awhile. Correspond with Gringotts through the owl post now that they know how to get in touch with you and we can go down there early next week to get serious about property once things have calmed sown some."

Amelia then leans back in her chair and closes her eyes for a moment. "Because you have had to deal with adults that were cruel your whole life, I have tried to be the opposite these last couple of days just to show you that another kind of person exists. But in a way, I am failing. Because I am not telling you the truth, and I don't want that kind of relationship with the child that I should have raised. Harry, you are going to be twelve next month. The law has made you an adult due to a quirk of magical law, because when the laws were passed nobody expected an active soul bond between people that were not at least seventeen or so. Generally speaking, even in ancient times when people could get married by their parents practically straight out of the womb, it is and was understood that people are not mature enough to form a soul bond until at least that age. I don't know if you are truly that mature for your age, or if there is something odd going on here because of Alice's circumstances or even your own. After all, you did survive the killing curse. But I know that you will need help from somebody that has been there before. As I respect the law and everything happening here falls within it, I am not going to try to mess with things. Merlin knows you have enough adults in your life that are trying to fiddle with it. But, should you need anything. Please know that I will help." Then she glances over at Alice. "Let me rephrase. Should you need anything legal. As opposed to what I can only describe as blatant, public, and highly satisfying blackmail of a ministry employee. Again I find myself saying that while I can't say that I don't approve, I would rather you didn't make a habit of that. I will have to step in eventually if you do."

Alice looks supremely calm. "The man was a bigoted wretch that was intending to use another persons circumstance of birth to commit legalized murder. Frankly, he deserves far worse and I can only hope that I will be there to see it when the wheel turns back to him."

Amelia shakes her head. "I don't disagree. But you do realize that you have now made enemy that will curse on sight if he thinks he can get away with it? Two, actually, assuming that Umbridge manages to wriggle out of her current problems."

Alice tilts her head to one side, as though curious. "Madam Bones, should your predictions come true, do you wish to be informed of the result of such a meeting? Or would you prefer to not know?"

Amelia locks eyes with Alice for a few seconds, thinking about the last day. Realizing that both times that the girl has come across any kind of real opposition she immediately went for the metaphorical throat with a savagery that was likely only tempered by the presence of Harry and herself. Just what had life been like during her hundred plus years in the mirror, that she would come out of it like this? "Do you want the truth?"

Alice doesn't quite smile, but her lip twitches slightly. "The truth may allow some freedom, but why do I think that the truth in this case may be all that keeps me from losing mine? Yes, please. The truth."

Amelia gathers her thoughts for a moment. "Officially I am required to tell you that any kind of harm to a magical is to be reported to the DMLE. Off the record I will tell you that the Wizengamot that would try your case is filled with the friends and coworkers of these two. Again off the record I will remind you that aside from Harry, who neither has nor is likely ever to have the kind of political power it would take to free you from prison thanks to Dumbledore, you have nobody. I would do what I could to achieve a fair trial, of course. But I suspect it would go poorly for you."

Alice nods. "Thank you Madam Bones. It is always good to know where one stands."  
Harry spends this conversation thinking about Quirrelmort. He was a bad guy. A murderer, an attempted child killer. The Voldemort portion of him was evil on a level that requires a new word to adequately explain.

But she didn't know all that.

Her decision to save him was something that he will always be grateful for. But Quirrell was in such bad shape he was legitimately having a bit of trouble dealing with Harry, much less her. Granted, he did try to kill her. A lot can be justified because of that. But then she disabled his ability to cast. That could have been the end of it.

But it wasn't. No, then she took that potion that made her look like some kind of demon and tore him to pieces. "Savaged by an animal" the Auror report had said, and they were right.

She saved his life. He would always be grateful. But for the first time it occurs to Harry that he was bound to somebody that might need some help saving their soul.

Fortunately, circumstances had come about that would give him plenty of time.

HaA

After Amelia gets back to her paperwork the day slows down to a crawl again for Harry and Alice. Once more on the small loveseat set in a corner not visible from the door, the two watch as she deals with her various minions for a couple of hours while simultaneously trying to make a dent in the small mountain of paperwork that has been accumulating since they left for lunch. Apparently setting up a trial requires a few signatures. It is four thirty and nearly time for Bones to leave for the day when Moody and Lepenski finally enter the office again. After setting himself up in his chair, setting privacy wards, and nodding to Harry and Alice, he turns to Bones and hands her a piece of paper.

"Here it is, Amelia. The order from Crouch. Pretty basic, but the warden was using it as his excuse to abuse the wing in it's entirety. I may have asked the old fool a few fairly pointed questions while I was in there." Moody gives a grimace that causes his scarred face to stretch oddly and a sneer develops. "Because he had this in his desk saying that only Crouch could be informed, and Crouch was no longer in the DMLE to be informed, the man used it as a way to essentially torture the wing the Death Eaters are in. He fed them barely enough to keep them alive, let the dementors in the cell block far more often that he should have, and ignored anything they did to each other. In his defense, he lost his wife, son, daughter, and home to you-know-who's followers back in '79. But even with that, we need to get him out of there."

Amelia reads the document, then looks at Moody with a shocked expression. "How could this go on so long? Is there no oversight of Azkaban at all?"

Moody points to the paper. "The warden is the oversight, and there are basically no rules or regulations for the prison itself that don't directly relate to keeping the prisoners and those damn dementors on the bloody island. By law, he hasn't done anything wrong. But that doesn't matter, you have to find a way to get him off that post. If you want to go kill the Death Eaters, I'll shove every damn one through the veil of death myself. But this? What he was doing? Its inhuman Amelia, and its creating things that are even worse."

They all think about this for a minute, then Lepenski speaks up from her chair next to Moody. "I found a couple of things about this kind of odd, Director Bones."

Amelia looks at her and leans back. "Give it to me, Lepenski. I can take it."

Lepenski smiles, then glances at her notes. "Really, it comes down to the dates. Dates and circumstances that are a little too convenient for me to be willing to let it go. So much of the last couple of days has been just having all the paperwork in one spot at one time to see it all and puzzle out what it means. I have been staring at all this for so long though that my thoughts are starting to turn to mush. Let me give you a basic time line as I see it and we can start trying to pull some truth out of the muck. Or rather, see if you agree with where my brain went with it all."

She gets nods all around, and continues.

"October 31st, 1981. You-know-who kills the Potters, less Harry here. The wills are squashed by the Wizengamot before they are even read, less than a day later. Two days after the murder, Sirius Black is arrested for the murder of Peter Pettigrew and twelve muggles, despite the fact that the closest they have to a corpse on Pettigrew is a finger. Black's wand was apparently never checked to see what his last spell was, based on what I can determine from the arrest records. Pettigrew's wand wasn't at the scene, nor his clothes or anything else. Within twenty-four hours Black is in Azkaban. About the same time, Albus Dumbledore appointed himself as the magical guardian of Harry and began the ten years with the Dursley family for him and ten years of shamelessly stealing from the Potter vaults for himself. Five days after Black appears in Azkaban, Barty Crouch Jr. gets picked up for his part in what happened to the Longbottoms. A week later, he gets his trial and is sentenced to basically all of his existence in Azkaban. A month after that, Barty quits as the director of magical law enforcement. The last thing he does as director is that order to Azkaban, which he hand delivered when he took his wife to see their son as she was dying of some kind of wasting illness. Four days after that, Barty Crouch Jr. is found dead in his cell. About the same time, Mrs Crouch is also found dead, but curiously enough there is no healer called in to look at the body. She is placed in a coffin by Crouch and buried in the family cemetery after a funeral that was so private that I can't find anybody that was invited to it. Barty Crouch Jr. was fed to the sea, as is protocol when nobody is willing to claim the body of a prisoner of Azkaban."

She stops talking for a minute, and bites her lip. "I don't want to make wild accusations Madam Bones, but this all looks really suspicious to me. Dumbledore squashed the wills and according to the Dursleys Harry was delivered the night of the thirty first. But he didn't push for magical guardianship until Black was caught and stuffed out of sight. Now, he will likely claim that he only did so because Black was in no position to do so himself, and that may be true. But not too many people could have the pull to push Barty into ignoring a right to trial, even if the evidence at the time was pretty damning. Add to that Dumbledore had seen the wills and that Black was a magically sworn godfather, and the whole thing stinks on ice. The second part of this, that order to Azkaban that made Black's life so much worse for so long, I am not even convinced that has anything to do with him. I want to send somebody out to the Crouch family cemetery to exhume the body of his late wife. If I am wrong, no harm done. But with the wording on that order and all the other strangeness going on, if I am right than we may have an escaped Death Eater on our hands. I am trying really hard to not believe that Barty would have swapped a dying wife for his son, but nothing else makes sense."

Amelia and Moody, having been following along, are not particularly surprised by the conclusions that she has drawn. After a moment to digest the information Amelia responds. "Make that part of the warrants we put together for Crouch today, and keep this quiet. Crouch is powerful, well educated, and according to what we are seeing here, potentially a closet Death Eater. The last thing we need is him finding out what is going on before we are ready for him. Alastor, I know that Dumbledore is your friend and I can promise that he will be treated fairly. But if any of this pans out he has to answer for it. There is too much. If it ends up being true, he has to pay for it, and I don't want him finding out about it before we know. Am I understood?"

Moody sits there for maybe ten seconds, head held low, shaking it slightly. As though putting the pieces together himself. Finally, he looks up at her. The sadness etched on his expression is almost painful to see. "Yeah, I hear you. He won't hear about this from me, but he will hear about it. The man has his fingers in so many pies there is no way to keep something like this from him for long. If he doesn't already know you are on to him, I give it a day, maybe two before he finds out. We better make'em count."

HaA

Once back at Bones Manor they find a package from Gringotts that details what according to Grimknott would be an ideal property that has fallen into their lap as part of an estate that they were forced to foreclose on after the client had had the misfortune to get locked up in a muggle prison and was unable to make payments for four years. Gringotts had been testing the waters trying to find somebody that might be interested for awhile that would actually have the wealth to pay for it. The home is in the country, but within five miles of a small town that has a supermarket as well as various other conveniences, all muggle of course. The property itself is twenty acres with a stream that moves through it year round, and a small pond a couple of hundred feet across has been dug in at one point. But the home itself is the part that Grimknott thinks they will like. It is quite old, but was heavily renovated in the forties and when they did so they added a good sized underground shelter that is accessible from the basement of the house and from a small tunnel that doubles as a garage for the muggle horseless carriages. Supposedly according to muggles this underground area is impenetrable. Grimknott admits in his letter to them that he is skeptical, but it is unbelievably stout and mostly made of concrete and steel, two materials that react well to warding and can easily accept runes. The previous owner had lived mostly in the home above, but had upgraded the shelter below to be magical in nature. Instead of a refrigerator, a magical cool room with a permanent ice chest in it. Instead of lights running on electricity, small rune clusters that would emulate the same from a toggle on the wall. The main selling point though was the enormous size of the underground structure. It would accommodate all their needs, and could also be used for it's original purpose if needs be.

After discussing it, Harry and Alice decide to check it out on Monday, and send a note to Grimknott to tell him so.

During dinner the big talk at the table is the status of Sirius, as Bones had a healer take a look at him during the day.

"He is in bad shape, Harry. According to the healer that I had look at him he is in better shape mentally than she might have expected, but worse shape physically. She isn't sure why that is, but suspects that he has some kind of casting he can do without a wand that was helping him stave off the dementors but keeping his magical core close to empty, so his magic was less capable of keeping his body from falling apart due to all the other conditions he was dealing with. We will probably only know if he tells us. But she doesn't think any of the damage is permanent. It just might take a while to recover from it. He will probably never be the man he might have been but in a year or two he will be able to fake it for a while if he needs to, is what she told me. In any case, he seems to be mentally sound enough to see you tomorrow, so my plan is to take you two in with me when I go to the ministry. We'll have that meeting, and then send you two back here to keep safe and out of the way until his trial the next day. The next couple of days are going to be more than a little crazy at the ministry. When you aren't there to see him or the trial, my recommendation is to stay here at the house and relax. The way your life seems to run Harry, you will probably need the time to rest up."

Harry nods. "Yeah, that works. Thanks for putting us up. Assuming that the Wizengamot listen to reason, do we know where Sirius is going to be staying when he is freed?"

Amelia swallows the current bite. "Honestly Harry, probably St. Mungos for at least a couple of weeks. After that it would be up to him, of course. We have room here, but I would be pretty surprised if the man wanted to stay with the current director of the DMLE. I didn't put him in there, and I am trying to get him out. But I could still see a tad bit of resentment being reasonable. I did run the department for ten years while he was stuck in there after all."

Harry nods. Sadly, that actually makes a lot of sense. But then again, who knows? Maybe by the time he is recovered enough to be out and about Harry and Alice could put him up. He gives her a look, and she nods. No talking. Not even mentally really, she just knows where his mind would go and gives the response. That has been happening a lot since the bond happened. They rarely need to communicate simple things anymore, though they often will anyway just because it is nice to interact. They never get in each others way, even in the confines of a closet or bathroom. They seem to have an instinctual knowledge of where each other are without putting any thought into it.

The whole thing would be creepy if it wasn't so nice.

The fact that Alice quirked a slight smile and nodded as he looks up after that thought makes him smile.

HaA

At breakfast the next morning, they once again get the update from Amelia concerning the previous evenings goings on.

"Well, Harry. You are pretty popular these days."

Looking up from his eggs and sausage, Harry looks quizzically at her. "How is that?"

Placing her knife and fork down for a moment, Amelia gives him a grin. "Apparently not long after we came back to the manor last night, the Wizengamot session was let out and Albus fell all over himself trying to get to my office to catch you before you had left. He must have gotten word after the session was opened that you were in my office again. For this reason, I think we are going to avoid my office today while you are at the ministry. In, say hi to Black, and then get you out of there before things have time to go wrong. Besides, apparently Albus wasn't the only one looking for you. The Auror on duty doing ministry contact for the night shift started getting requests for your current address as soon as the Wizengamot let out from at least a dozen people yesterday, most of which were former death eaters. One of which is the headmaster of Hogwarts. Rumor has it that they are trying to push through an inquiry into what has set the goblins off and are intending to put you in the hot seat of the Wizengamot chambers. I'd guess dear Dumbledore as the big cheese of the session will want to ask you questions that I am sure will be completely honest and not leading at all about what happened and why things have gotten crazy in the bank. Frankly, I think we are going to put a glamor o the two of you before we go in today. We can drop it when you talk to Black, and then put it back on until you are back here at the manor. Right now they are requesting you, but if they actually knew for certain where you were I have little doubt that the request would get upgraded to having my Aurors go out and get you."

Harry just shakes his head. "This is getting out of hand. Seriously, Alice had it right. What do they think I can do about this anyway? I don't set goblin policy and I am not the one that cheesed them off."

Bones starts cutting her sausage while she responds. "I know, Harry. More than one of my Aurors got caught up in this due to having kids that went to the school. I have been getting updates for two days. One way or another though, it'll be over tomorrow. We have the trial at two, and by five Gringotts will be done dealing with the public on this. We just need to make it to the weekend without Dumbledore catching you or exploding from frustration."

Alice tilts her head slightly. "Madam Bones, not that I am in any way complaining, but may I ask why you are taking so many risks for us? Again, no insult intended and I am grateful. But it seems almost as though you are working at cross purposes in this."

Amelia finishes her last bite and pushes her plate away. Holding a finger up to stall a moment, she then answers. "No, that is a fair question. The answer is that while they make the laws, it is not the job of my department to cater to their whim because they do so. It is our job to enforce the laws already created. If there was a law on the books that soon to be twelve year old boys with scars on their foreheads needed to be brought into the ministry, well... Actually if that was the case I would probably resign, but whoever my replacement was would need to either do it or resign himself. But Harry hasn't broken any laws. He can't set bank policy. There is no possible way that what Gringotts is doing can be laid at his feet because he doesn't have the authority to be held accountable. Even if he had gone into the bank and lied his arse off to make this happen, it still wouldn't be within my remit to do anything about it. Of course, going into Gringotts again might be a bad idea for him if that were the case, but I think you see where I am going with this. Harry cannot be held responsible for this. So I am not required to treat him as though he is, and while the Wizengamot can request somebody for an inquiry until they are blue in the face they can't pluck someone off the street for it without cause or a law to back them up. Without that, they can all piss off. The reason for using a glamor in this case isn't really to hide Harry in the sense of somehow breaking the law. The reason for it is the same reason that famous people go incognito when they travel, if they don't they can't get anything done because they are too busy dealing with their fame and stalkers like Dumbledore."

Alice looks pleased. "Thank you Madam Bones. I do appreciate a straight answer. Shall we be leaving for the ministry soon?"

Bones peeks at the grandfather clock in the living room down the hall. "Indeed, we should be off. Lets get this done."

HaA

Authors Note:

I swear, the meeting with Sirius will happen next chapter. I just had a few final things to get out of the way before that happened. I know that this chapter is kinda lackluster, and short as well. Basically I needed a chance to set up a couple more things, and explain where Bones is coming from and why in my mind she can seemingly defy the ministry like this. The answer is that she isn't. She is just demanding the ministry work within the laws that are on the books, as opposed to the whims they have at the moment. She doesn't have any illusions that she will make it through this completely unscathed but figures she can weather the storm while cleaning house of a few bits of detritus that are cluttering her rogues gallery.

I do, however, have a problem. I am trying so hard in my mind to justify putting Alice anywhere but Slytherin and I am utterly failing. Ravenclaw is a possibility, but she doesn't learn just to learn. She would have no trouble in a classroom setting, but left to her own devices she learns the way a Renaissance engineer would. She has an effect or ability that she wants, and rips through material and conducts tests until she can cobble together a way to make it work. Hufflepuff falls flat because while she is not afraid of hard work, she isn't much of a people person. The entire concept of American McGee's Alice and the follow up, "Madness Returns" (which I am not really using in this as far as abilities go, but there was nothing wrong with the storyline) is that she is three part terrified to four parts filled with rage and the combination takes her off the rails. I suppose a case could be made that she has since conquered the fear and rage that caused her to literally lose her mind for years, but the fact that she had the problem in the first place I should think would blacklist her from the house of lions. The problem with putting her in Slytherin is that while she has the attitude and a lot of the cunning, she has none of the beliefs common to Slytherin, and essentially zero patience for fools.

Basically, I can't put her there because I think I would quickly run out of Slytherins.

But I thought I might ask if anybody reading had a thought that I had missed.

In any case, next chapter will likely be a week or more. Theoretically.

Last night a combination of insomnia and my muse being a psychotic bitch brought you this, so who knows, really.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The Good, the Bad, and the Ax.

Standing before the fireplace, Amelia turns to the two with her wand in her hand. "Maintaining a glamor isn't terribly difficult, but with the number of people looking for you and the rumors having gotten out that you and I have been seen together a lot lately, it will need to be a significant change to be effective. Any requests?"

Alice and Harry look at each other, considering. Alice is the one that responds. "Can you make him look and sound like me? I have also been seen in your presence, so seeing me again would not be unusual."

Amelia adopts a slight frown. "That won't work though, whatever I make you look like will be seen to be potter, and we are then back having the same problem we were before."

Alice looks mildly annoyed, and then repeats her question. "Can you make Harry look and sound like me?"

"Yes, of course. It wouldn't even be difficult, the two of you are pretty close to the same size. But that doesn't help unless you are staying behind. I assumed that you would be going."

Harry grins as he realizes where Alice is going with this. "She will be. She just won't be as obvious as the rest of us."

While he is speaking Alice reaches behind her back and pulls out another small bottle of purple liquid, and quaffs it while grabbing a hold of Harry's shoulder. Putting the bottle away as she begins to shrink she causes Harry to lean slightly when her legs will no longer reach the floor, but by then she only weighs maybe thirty pounds and is dropping still more very quickly. In no time at all she is back down to two inches tall and sitting on his shoulder, her cheek pressed into his earlobe and a slight upturning of her lips being the only evidence of the joy she feels to be so overwhelmed by Harry's essence.

Amelia Bones reflects that she is going to have to put a sticking charm on her monocle if she is really intending to keep it over her eye when she is around these two. Eyebrow raising and jaw dropping events happen too often, otherwise. "What in blazes was that you drank?!"

Alice responds, again in her rather high pitched tone that Harry can't help but find absolutely adorable. "Merely a potion to shrink myself, Madam Bones. I should think that this would be obvious."

Bones still looks shocked for a few seconds, then smiles. "I had wondered how you hid from Dumbledore during the last week of term, I take it that I am seeing the way now?"

Harry nods with a shrug that causes a sniff and a poke to his neck as Alice gets resettled. "Yeah. She mostly stayed in my pocket. Gave me some good advice on how to teal with manipulative twits and watched my back. Made me feel a bit like a pack mule, but it worked well. Not sure if it is the bond or just that we are getting more familiar with each other, but I have to say I like having her this close. So would this work? Me looking like her and Alice herself hanging out in an inside pocket?"

Amelia gives a hesitant nod. "Possibly, it depends on the duration of the potion."

Alice shakes her head and responds, making Harry smile at what he thinks of as her pixie speak once again so close to his ear. "You misunderstand, Madam Bones. This isn't duration based. This is the size I will be until I take another potion which will cause me to grow. It won't ever wear off on it's own and cannot be dispelled for there is currently no magic at work."

Amelia shakes her head in near disbelief. "A potion equivalent of a permanent transfiguration? That is alchemy master level potions. I don't even know anybody that can do that. Where did you get it?"

Harry giggles. "She brewed it, of course. Custom for her." With that he opens the front of his robe, and with a sigh of annoyance Alice releases her grip on his ear and climbs inside to the pocket that they had reinforced during the last days at school. Harry had been concerned that some of his less pleasant classmates might take a shot at him there or on the train home and was concerned for her safety, so she now has an old steel snuff box that she climbs into that is padded and has had a hole put into it that lines up with a button hole that they placed on the robe itself. At her current size she could even climb out of it that way if she needed to, though it would be a tight fit.

Deciding that she was going to have to look into this later as they really didn't have time right now to get into the hows and whys of the seemingly young girl revealing herself to be a potion prodigy, Bones casts the spell to change Harry's look and how he will be heard, then backs it up with a very weak notice-me-not to make getting around in the ministry easier. Anybody that felt the need to search for the director of magical law enforcement would find her and a young girl that didn't seem important enough to take a good look at. Checking her work and finding it acceptable, she uses the floo to get to the ministry after telling Harry to follow right after.

HaA

After all the trouble and worry they had dealt with to finally get there the last steps of the task were unbelievably easy, Harry muses as he finally enters the holding cells area of the DMLE. Dumbledore must be getting truly frantic, because Harry recognized his transfiguration professor, McGonagall, standing in the ministry atrium looking both irritated and perhaps slightly hurt. Madam Bones had given her a nod as they passed and Harry couldn't help but grin, but hid it in a cough. Once they are there, they find Lepenski fiddling about with paperwork at a desk next to the cell block entrance. She gives them a happy, if somewhat confused smile as she pulls a lever on the wall that locks the doors both further into the cell block and into the rest of the ministry.

"I thought you were bringing Potter, Ma'am? Not that I am not thrilled to see you, Alice. Make sure to say something nice to Delores on your way by, she has been screaming dire predictions concerning the future careers and longevity of every Auror that has spoken to her for the last couple of days. If you can work her up into a heart attack, I'll admit it wouldn't bother me nearly as much as it probably should."

"Good morning, Lepenski." Amelia says just before she ends the glamor on Harry, the notice me not having been canceled as they walked into the room. "You didn't really think I was going to risk that whiskered whack-job finding us out today did you? Have a little faith!"

After some good natured laughter, Amelia's tone becomes more serious. "How is Black this morning?"

Lepenski turn to Harry. "He seems to be doing a lot better. The dreamless sleep potion did him some good I think, Mad-Eye was right on the money with that one. He may never recover completely physically, but when the healer stopped by this morning before her rounds at St. Mungos and looked at him she said that ten years of using his magic constantly plus his magic continually draining to deal with his body trying to fail on him had done wonders for his gather rates. The core itself has probably gotten weaker as that is part of his overall physical condition, that should improve as his health does. But she said that based on his core recovery speed he could probably duel for hours and as long as no one spell used more than half of his potential power, it isn't likely he would even be able to deplete himself again. He could cast the department standard stunner continuously for days if he needed to, or until normal physical fatigue knocked him out. She doesn't want to speculate what it would take to overwhelm a shield he put up if it took more than a single shot to do it, but it would be impressive to watch. Kind of a tough path to power though. I don't envy him."

Harry looks interested. "So whatever he did was the magical equivalent of a martial artist training under a waterfall?"

Amelia and Lepenski both look confused. Harry shakes his head, looking more sad than anything else. "Never mind. It was in a movie I watched one day when the Dursleys were out. Spent three days in the cupboard when they got home and found me using their precious telly."

Obviously this explanation hasn't really helped much, but Harry waves them off. "Moving on. Can we go see him?"

Lepenski nods. "Absolutely. If I were you, I would make sure to throw up some privacy wards when you get there, just in case. I would also probably cast a silence on Umbridge. Otherwise her rage fit gets annoying."

Amelia can't help but snicker at that. "I can imagine. Lets go Harry. Remember, we need to keep this relatively quick. All things being equal I would rather not have problems in the ministry today. To put it bluntly, the whole Gringotts thing only works in our favor if none of these idiots that think you can somehow piss a solution onto it can find you. If they can and get wind of the entire situation with Black, I can see attempts at blackmail being a thing. Not the polite, kind and happy blackmail your wife favors, more of the fix my problem or your godfather goes back to hell kind of blackmail. We have some real pieces of work on the Wizengamot right now."

As they are walking down the hall and come across a dirtier, more downcast, and decidedly less pleased pink horror. Amelia doesn't even offer her an opportunity to speak, rather she silences the room as they walk by. A few cells later they find another occupied one.

The man is average height and build, but currently scarily slender. He is wearing reasonably clean and patched but still obviously quite old prison garb. His hair is a tangled brown mess and when he looks up from where he is sitting on the bunk as he leans against the wall reading, he drops the book as he stares at Harry. His eyes squint as he stands, and while he doesn't seem to move with any grace, he does make his way across the cell without mishap. "Harry? Harry, is that you?" Blacks eyes are beginning to mist over with the start of tears, and Harry reaches through the bars to hold his hand.

"Yeah, its me Sirius. I've seen the wills. I know you didn't do it. I know you are my godfather, the closest thing to family I have left. We are gonna get you loose. One way or another, I promise."

Black kneels, so he can look Harry in the eye. "Yes. Yes, that will be great, no question. But don't take any risks. Be safe and careful. I heard things, Harry." he looks around as though afraid someone might be sneaking up on them. "I heard things while they had me locked up in that place. They don't believe he is gone, and he has already taken too much from me. Too much from you. Maybe it is just ten years of hearing it, but I am beginning to fear they are right. I want to be free, really, never doubt that. I want to get a chance to know my godson. But don't take chances for this old dog. What is left of me probably isn't worth the risk."

Amelia lets the two approximate hugging for a few minutes as the tears fall, then speaks up.

"Black, I don't want to break up a tender moment but I have information you need and I am hoping that you can supply me with some information that I need. Can we talk for a few minutes? I don't think we are going to get a better opportunity and Harry doesn't have a lot of time here today."

Black stands back up and offers a smirk. "Amelia Bones. Running the DMLE. You know, I have to admit I never saw that coming." The smirk fades to a grimace. "Of course, the view from Azkaban being what it is I imagine I didn't see a whole lot of things. I know the drill, I worked in the department after all. What do you need?"

Amelia quirks an eyebrow. "You worked as a ministry hit wizard, Black. A legal thug with a wand, not an Auror, and you only bothered to do that when the mood struck you, as I recall. What was the rallying cry you and James used to use to announce the jobs you would take again?"

Black gives a half smile. "Lizard lips to my sexy hips, then a trip to Azkaban!"

Bones gives a snicker. "Indeed. Look, your trial is tomorrow at two. We have some pretty compelling evidence that you were framed by Pettigrew and left hung out to dry by the ministry. I know that Auror Lepenski has told you what we believe to prepare you for trial. Can you think of anything else that might help us to nail this down? You'll be under truth serum, but we need to know what questions to ask."

Black looks at her as though considering. Turns to Harry. "Can I trust her?"

"Since we just met today, Sirius, I am not sure why you are asking me. But if it helps, I trust her. As soon as we presented the evidence, she got you out of Azkaban and is pushing through this trial so hard that she has the Senior Undersecretary in a cell about four down to expedite things." Harry jerks a thumb towards Delores' cell."

Black reaches through the bars and ruffles Harry's black mop of hair. His smile is tinged with sadness, but no less real for it being so. "Because Harry, you're all I have left. If I can't trust you then it doesn't matter anymore anyway."

He then turns back to Bones. "I am not sure if this will help your case or not, but Pettigrew was definitely still alive when I was hauled in. He is an unregistered animagus. I followed him for nearly a day and a half, and when I finally found him he made up some lie about how I betrayed the Potters, then used a blasting curse on a muggle lorry. One of the ones with the big tube on wheels for a trailer. The explosion knocked a hole in the street and threw me twenty five, maybe thirty feet. Damn near killed me, knocked me for a loop like you wouldn't believe. Dead muggles and fire everywhere. Couldn't hear a damn thing, but I could see him. He used a low powered cutting curse to take off his finger, transformed into his animagus form of a rat to disappear into the sewers." Black looks at the ceiling, as though double checking his mind for details. "The truck had a word on it, but I'm not sure what it was or how to pronounce it. Spelled P-R-O-P-A-N-E. Every once in a while I saw stationary tanks that said the same thing near the pumps when I filled up my motorbike. But I couldn't tell you what it is except dangerous and loud."

Amelia responds to this. "Propane, Sirius. Its a fuel like petrol only it is a gas and a lot more explosive. Muggles use it to heat their homes and sometimes for cooking, but it is one of those things like dragons are to the wizarding world. They need it around and the get a lot of use out of it, but they have to be really careful with it or there are problems. Sounds like Pettigrew wasn't, either on accident or by design. You say that you followed him for a day and a half. The ministry was looking very closely at apparition and tracking all kinds of magical movement, so I can believe that. But how did you track somebody for two days in November? Especially if they are a rat animagus, that would be a nightmare."

Black again looks at Harry. "You say I can trust her. You say she is good people. I guess we are about to find out." Then to Harry's astonishment he changes. In one second there is Sirius Black, and in the next is an enormous black wolfhound, tail wagging and a slight whimper escaping its throat as it sneaks its tongue out from between the bars and catches Harry across the face.

Amelia crosses her arms. "I take it that Pettigrew wasn't the only unregistered animagus that was there last night. Though I have to say, this answers so many questions about your condition."

About the time she hit the word 'unregistered' the dog was laying down with its paws over its eyes, one slightly askew so a sliver of soulful and sorrowful eye could peak out while the whimper from earlier made a reappearance. By the end, he was changing back and responded. "Yeah, the dementors are sight based basically. They can sense emotion, but those are muted in an animal form. Harder for them to pick out so they mostly left me alone. By the time I realized what I was doing to my health by keeping my animagus form up all the time and hiding under the cot I was in a bad spot because I was pretty sure direct dementor exposure would have killed me. So I had to stay the course. Not my finest moment. For what it is worth, I fully intended to register once we had taken care of old lizard lips. It was just too useful to have when running Death Eaters down and if everybody knew, it would have just gotten me killed most likely."

Amelia purses her lips. "A fair point, but still against the law. I think I can honestly say though, that if it comes down to it and that was your only crime in this mess, I'll pay the thousand Galleon fine for you myself. Harry, we should probably go. Black, I am going to send in Lepenski and Shacklebolt later today to get some measurements, maybe get you a haircut. If I send you into the courtroom looking like that your chances of getting free are cut in about half. Unless I miss my guess, you are a lord if you are free. We need to make you look like one." With that, she starts walking towards the entrance to the cell block.

Harry gives his godfather a final look. "Tomorrow. Tomorrow we can get you out of here." Then he hurries to catch Bones.

HaA

Getting the glamor put back on is easy, and the trip back towards the atrium was almost behind them when an alarm went off somewhere deeper in the ministry, causing Amelia to curse under her breath and Aurors to start running towards the sound.

"What is that?" Harry asked, looking around as though the answer was on the wall in fine print somewhere.

"Somebody tried to cast an unforgivable near the Wizengamot chambers. Probably the Imperious curse. It is rare, but every once in a while we get somebody stupid enough to try that kind of thing in the ministry. We have a few areas where detection magic for that kind of thing runs constantly. Probably somebody trying to secure a few extra votes on something. I need to check this out, can you make it to the floo on your own?"

Harry, in his Alice glamor, nods. "Sure, it is only a few doors away. I should be fine. Good luck, be safe."

Amelia starts jogging towards the stairs, calling over her shoulder. "You too, I will see you tonight."

HaA

The trip to the floo doesn't go quite as easily as Harry might have liked, unfortunately. Passing an open doorway, an gnarled and calloused hand reaches out and grabs him by the collar of his robe, hauling him in the door while everybody else is looking towards the sound of the alarm. He is then flung across the room, impacting heavily with a desk as he hears the door shut and latch.

Having hit the desk with his back and now getting up off the floor, Harry has only a moment to look around. In front of him between the him and the door is the executioner from yesterday. The man that would have used the ax that he is now carrying over his shoulder to end Hagrid's life. He is a large man, but still a man, nothing like Hagrid. Of course, in comparison to the tiny frame of Alice that he is wearing or even himself if he wasn't, the difference between him standing up to Hagrid or this obviously powerful man would be unlikely to change much. The one behind the desk is of course that Thornwood bastard, looking pleased as all hell behind his short mustache and pointed beard.

There is a chuckle from behind the desk, and Thornwood takes a moment to draw his wand, beginning to move around towards the door. "You know, I am not sure which is worse. That Harry fucking Potter would want to hang out with a worthless little loudmouth cunt like you, or that you would be interested in a walking dead idiot like that boy. It doesn't matter. Walden, do be a good sport and try to keep the mess to as little as possible. It wouldn't do for this to be traced back to us."

With that, the man drops the ax and rushes forward. Grabbing Harry by the throat, lifting him up and slamming him against the wall as Harry struggles to breathe and winces from the pain as his back complains about this rough treatment twice in the same minute.

Thornwood has a final word as he reaches the door. "You know, you aren't a bad looking kid. If we meet again in the next life keep your mouth shut and your legs open. You'll get farther than you did this time." With that he chuckles and quietly exits the room while Harry tries to scream and black spots dance across his vision.

The man Harry only knows as Walden licks his face. "Nobody coming to help you, worthless slag. They all rushed off to go save someone from a big mean unforgivable that never actually happened. Been a while since I had a chance to kill someone that looked like they might be worth slipping a dick into. Shame I can't keep you around."

Taking the time to pound Harry's head against the wall a few times, but never loosening his grip, the man is almost giddy as he moves his head in and gives Harry a kiss on the lips, before once again licking him, this time on his neck. Moving back to arms reach and beginning to bring his weight to bear against Harry, he pulls him up. "Want to see the light fade from those pretty little eyes of yours, sweetie. Hurry up and die for me.

Just as Harry can feel the edges of his vision starting to fade to black, the man lets go and starts screaming. At the same time Harry gasps in multiple huge breaths, desperate for air. As his vision clears he can see that the man, Walden, is stumbling around and has crashed into a wall, clutching at his eyes. Oddly, on either side of his head next to where his eyes are there is a streak of white that glitters. It takes Harry a moment, but he puzzles it out. "Is that... frost?"

At that time the man turns toward the sound of Harry's voice, still stumbling around, and when he brings down his hands to grope wildly for Harry, it is easy to see that both of his eyes are not so much covered in frost as they are encased in ice, lids trapped open and pupils visible as though seeing through shower glass. He cries pitifully as he searches for Harry by touch, but never produces a tear.

Ducking and moving quietly towards the door, Harry can't help but watch the poor man stagger around the office. Picking up the ax, he slings it over a shoulder, staggering at the weight of it. The man lets out a crying scream, "Put that down, that is MINE!" Charging towards the sound of the ax getting picked up, the man slams into the wall when Harry dives out of the way. Barely hearing Alice speak, but able to get the gist of the plan. He murmurs a quick "Right." when she is done. He then places the ax on the floor while the newly blind man is again staggering to his feet, quietly hissing all the vile things that he will do to Alice when he catches her. Harry holds the ax in such a way that the handle is facing towards Walden, and the bit of the ax is up. Then he looks at the executioner that had ended so many lives, and says: "Are you really this stupid, or am I simply brilliant in comparison?" The man charges a final time, but a few steps away a blast of cold leaps from the pocket in Harry's robe and a short four inch wall of ice is placed on the ground in front of his left foot. When the man trips Harry jerks back, but not before the man's own ax enters his chest.

The last thing he hears is a high pitched pixie voice that speaks very softly. "In the next life, you should be more careful with dangerous toys. You could get hurt."

HaA

Authors Note.

HAH! Sleep? What is this "Sleep" of which you speak, I know it not.

I know that there will be some people out there that will be wondering why I decided to make Sirius "cooler" in a way after his stint in Azkaban. First, I am not sure that I did. In canon, He never really had an opportunity to see a healer after his escape. Additionally, the populace was terrified of him above all other of Voldemort's minions due to a single incident that involved one wizard that legitimately nobody gave a shit about, and twelve muggles that we know only the most liberal and enlightened magical people could give two hoots over. Even when you include the supposed betrayal of the Potters, that isn't the kind of thing that inspires fear, really. Hate, yes. Disgust, surely. But fear that puts you over the likes of Bella? Yeah... Not sure I am buying that one. The only thing I can think of is that he was actually pretty damn impressive BEFORE he became a supposed turncoat. Take a man that had brought to justice a dozen murderers and have HIM suddenly go evil, and all of a sudden the way the populace reacts to him makes sense. Add in that he is from a historically dark family, making it easier for people to believe he was a turncoat, and viola. There you go. Instant terrorist, just add moron. But this requires that he was actually fairly powerful in the first place. Powerful, sneaky, or both. As for the way in which I made him cooler where his core refills very quickly, I don't really consider that terribly overpowered. He still can't do the kinds of things that Dumbledore or Voldemort can. Once Harry hits third year, he'll have more raw power to put into a spell than Sirius as well. The difference is that even if Sirius does something that completely drains his core, assuming that he isn't maintaining his animagus form or recovering from serious injury he will be ready to rock again in maybe an hour instead of a day.

As for why I did this? The real reason? Sirius Black was probably the character in the series that had the most depth, going from the borderline psychotic prankster that tried to murder a school mate with a were all the way through to a man that is willing to live on rats for nearly a year, desperate to save the son of his dead friend. As much as I like the series, a lot of the characters in it are pretty one dimensional. He isn't. In my mind, he deserved better than to be a throwaway that was used to crush the spirit of the protagonist. Not saying JKR did it wrong, just that I would have done it different.

Not gonna guess anymore when the next chapter is gonna fall. Tired of being wrong all the time.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Inappropriate Question.

Exiting the office quietly the two make their way to the floo as quickly as they can, and minutes later they are once again in Bones Manor. Harry sits on the loveseat that the two have more or less claimed for their own and Alice crawls out of her snuff box sanctuary to climb up his shoulder and rest against his neck, her legs crossed on his shoulder.

Harry's mind is a flurry of questions waiting to be voiced, and so he does so. "What was that frost thing you did? I thought that you didn't know any magic."

Alice's pixie giggle trickles into his ear like a balm for the soul. "I never said that, Harry. I said I didn't know if I could wield a wand. The item I used has very little in common with a wand, for all that I called it an 'Ice Wand' in my delirious ignorance when I was younger. Essentially, it is a rune staff with two functions, albeit that it is quite short for a staff. The first sends out the powerful freezing effect that I used on that animal's eyes to get you away from him. When I am normal sized it would have frozen him solid. The second will summon up a wall of ice that I used to protect myself temporarily from attacks. In this case I used it to trip him up a little. In effect, the man murdered himself through his own stupidity and single minded brutality. My sympathy for him is negligible."

Harry sighs. "What are we going to tell Bones?"

Alice can't help but laugh. "Nothing, of course."

Harry instinctively goes to turn his head and then stops when he hears Alice's "Eeep!"

"But we have to tell her, otherwise she won't know what a bastard Thornwood is. The man is dangerous, and she has to work with him!"

Alice nuzzles his neck, once again riding the joy of his overwhelming connection to her when she is this size. His being pouring into her every nook and cranny, filling it with contentment. Something about the steel in the snuff box cut off this euphoria. Now it infuses her so powerfully that it actually scares her a little, yet she is powerless to resist it. "Bones is more than capable of handling herself, Harry. I would wager that becoming the head of the DMLE isn't the kind of title that one receives as a carnival prize. But more importantly, she has already told us that if we were forced to defend ourselves from these people that she didn't want to know about it."

Harry's voice takes on an exasperated tone. "No she didn't, she said that any magical becoming hurt needed to be reported to the DMLE. She was very specific, and really, he attacked us! When people attack you, reporting it to the authorities is what you are supposed to do!"

Harry can hear the sigh from Alice as she again snuggles into the curve of he neck just under his robe. "In a perfect world, Harry, that would be true. Lamentably, we don't live on that world. Where we live she has already told me that admitting to damaging any of their precious little pure blooded fools would land us in Azkaban for the rest of our lives. I know that it means a lot to you to get your godfather out, but how badly do you wish to spend time in his old accommodations? If it would soothe your conscience any, I've no doubt that Amelia will quickly work out what happened. As long as she does not ask us any questions, however, I think silence is likely to be our best course."

"And if she does ask?"

Alice considers for a moment. "Well, it is true what they say, you cannot protect a man from himself. Don't forget Harry, when all is said and done it was your actions that put him to death as much or more than mine. When we have adjoining cells, I shall have plenty of time to explain exactly how things went wrong."

Harry's voice becomes irritated. "That wasn't what I meant, and you know it. I value your freedom more than my own I think. You have already done your time."

Alice, now feeling sleepy as the adrenaline starts to wear off and the stress of the day begins to fade to the overwhelming pressure of Harry's bond, finds herself yawning before she can respond. "I know, Harry. But you should know that I feel the same about you. Can we rest for a while? I... Feel."

Harry nods, half asleep himself at this point, and blessed oblivion overtakes them both.

HaA

When Harry awakens it is to a loud voice, though he doesn't quite get what is said the first time. Rubbing his eyes with his hands for a moment he can feel Alice moving out from under his collar to lounge on his shoulder again. Upon opening his eyes he sees Madam Bones standing over him, looking concerned and exasperated.

"I am sorry, Amelia. Could you repeat that? I was dozing."

"I asked if you two had anything to do with Macnair killing himself with his own ax. He was found in the heads office for the Control of Magical Creatures, and Thornwood has stated under truth serum that the last he saw Alice was in the office with him."

Harry can feel Alice wince slightly at that, then he hears a pixie giggle erupt from his shoulder.

Bones is looking more and more upset as the seconds tick by and Alice continues to giggle.

"What is so damn funny, Alice? If we can't come up with some kind of evidence that you are innocent you will probably be sent to Azkaban over this. Macnair has friends on the Wizengamot, he wasn't the only one to claim he was cursed to follow you-know-who in the last war, and all those idiots stick together. They will crucify you. This is no laughing matter."

The pixie voice of Alice answers. "Amelia, the reason it is funny is because the fool actually did something that will make it worth taking the risk I am about to."

Amelia crosses her arms. "What might that be?"

"He placed himself at the scene of the crime. I am guessing he did so because there is some kind of restriction on veritaserum that would stop me from using it?"

Amelia nods. "Yes, long ago in an effort to stop house secrets from getting out due to the children of nobles being dosed with the stuff, it was made illegal to use on minors under any circumstances. It can only be used on legal adults..." Then Amelia smiles. "You realize the risk you are taking? Even with serum testimony they may decide to lock you up anyway, particularly after what happened to Umbridge. This will also make your soul bond to Harry public knowledge, there is no coming back from that."

Alice giggles again. "That is the beauty of this, Madam Bones. I never touched the ax or Macnair and can say so under Veritaserum. If they force a response, they will find that everything I did was non-lethal, the man tripped and killed himself on an ax held by Harry Potter. Who, by the way, has a neck covered in bruises from when that brute tried to murder him. On Thornwood's orders, though Thornwood did believe that it was me at the time that he was expecting to die. By chance does the ministry have a way to view memories? Our two witness testimonies to his one should sew this up nicely, particularly if we can reliably show what the swine did and said."

After thinking about it, Amelia shakes her head. "I don't think so. The ministry does have a court pensieve, which would do exactly that. But unfortunately by law it can only be used by request, and only by members of the Wizengamot, lords, or in cases of treason against the realm. None of these conditions apply here, even the loophole of being a future member of the Wizengamot was taken by those damn laws Malfoy forced through. The Potters were always rich, but they can hardly be called powerful at this point. While I suppose that technically Harry could be a lord, as the Potters have had such rank in the past, trying to push it now and under these circumstances would be a good way to have the name stripped of its title. The lordship would undoubtedly be contested, and we would lose."

At this, Alice giggles again. Amelia doesn't look amused. "What, damn it, what am I missing now!?"

Alice stops, and looks as contrite as a two inch pixie that is rubbing her cheek against an earlobe possibly can. "I apologize, Madam Bones. I keep forgetting that you don't know quite all of Harry's secrets yet."

Harry cracks a smile of his own when he sees where she is going with this. "Yeah, we were going to save that one for a rainy day, but I guess we can pull it out now. Amelia, when Gringotts did their blood test to verify my standing I didn't just come up as a Potter. Apparently I am also the heir of Gryffindor by blood and Slytherin by conquest through my mother taking the previous one down. Even if they can somehow strip the lordship from the Potter name, do you think they can do that with Gryffindor and Slytherin as well?"

Madam Bones, the hard ass director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, reflects briefly that using a sticking charm on her monocle was a brilliant idea and decides then and there to reward herself with an extra brownie come dinner time. "Harry, no bull. Is this true? Because if it is, we can nail this bastard. Even if these idiots were willing to strike the lordship of Gryffindor there is no chance they would do so to Slytherin."

"No bull, Amelia. All true."

Amelia gets a huge smile. "Okay then. This solves all kinds of problems. I am going to get a hold of... Probably Shacklebolt and Lepenski, they should be done getting Black squared away by now and just getting back from lunch. I am putting you two into witness protection. If anybody approaches either of you, they'll get one warning before the Aurors have clearance to do as the situation demands. I need you to go with them to Gringotts and get this paperwork. See to it that it has been notarized by a wizard lawyer, Gringotts will have some on retainer. Might cost a few Galleons and you will likely need to retake the test with him in the room. But this is it. Thornwood is going to go down on this one and anybody that tries to back him before we drop this on their necks is going to have so much mud on their face they will be laying low for months. To top it off, the idiot gave us all the justification we need to see to it that nobody from the Wizengamot or the ministry will be allowed to approach you until this hearing takes place. Which I think I am going to schedule for right after the trial of Sirius Black. I need to get back to the office and start the paperwork. A hearing won't be as complicated as a trial, but it still requires a fair few wheels getting greased to see it happen. You two wait here for your escort."

HaA

Astonishingly that is just how it happened. Harry and Alice were met at the house, and after the amazement both Shacklebolt and Lepenski displayed at the miniscule size of Alice, the trip to Gringotts took less time than it would to tell it. Once they were actually there though, things slowed down a bit. Grimknott was so busy laughing once all the circumstances were explained to him, from the Death Eater killing himself with his own ax, to the way they were going to unveil Harry's titles to nail the man that ordered the hit, that Harry was concerned both about the goblin's health and getting out of the bank before it closed. But they did, then made a short pit stop by the ministry to give Amelia the paperwork. At Grimknott's suggestion, they included the last ten years of transactions from Harry's trust vault as part of the paperwork, also notarized. While technically not against the law, a magical guardian so shamelessly taking advantage of a young lord would likely be looked down upon by the members of the Wizengamot. When Dumbledore spotted them on the approach to Amelia's office and cruised in like a hungry vulture, Shacklebolt stopped him and the look on the old man's face when he was told that the boy he had been searching for was in witness protection, and they wouldn't tell him why, made Harry laugh out loud. Once back to Bones Manor, and after letting Susan in on the latest when she returned from a visit to the Abbot home, the three had a light dinner as Amelia had told them that she would be late tonight. Alice having chosen to remain small until that needed to change just to save on unneeded potion usage meant explaining all that to Susan, and both Harry and Susan found themselves unbelievably tickled watching Alice whip out a tiny knife and spoon, eating a pea as though it were a grapefruit the size of a bowling ball. When ten came and went, the two begged off to bed, leaving Susan in the library to finish reading. When the dreams came the two couldn't help but smile, as they featured each other.

HaA

Harry entered the courtroom flanked by Shacklebolt and Moody. Albus made an attempt at approaching him yet again, but was left looking like he had just crushed a lemon in his mouth when Mad-Eye merely looked at him grimly and shook his head. Looking around the room, it is obvious that Bones was right. There is an entire section on the far side of the hall that has twenty seats with only three filled. The section that Albus keeps looking at frantically is doing better, with the twenty seats there being about half full when the gong sounds off and the doors to the rest of the ministry are sealed. The short plump man in the green bowler hat standing up must mean something, as the rest of the murmuring stops when he does so. "Albus, if you would go ahead and start the proceedings."

The old man stands, his long white beard unruffled and his eyes gently creased in humor as though he was about to tell a funny joke. The normal twinkle in his eye that he somehow knew more than you was utterly absent, and to those that knew him well it was a sign of just how angry the man really was.

"I would love to do so Cornelius, but sadly I have been completely kept out of the loop on exactly why we are here. Perhaps you could explain this before the whole of the Wizengamot begins to fear that you are merely here to say hi to friends?" The message was clear. 'Stop wasting my time.' And it was echoed in the demeanor of nearly the entire room. With the exception of course of a few members of the DMLE, Harry, and the sixteen reporters who were going to get their story no matter what happened at this point. Dumbledore left out in the cold? Could his star finally be falling?

Fudge smiles and tips his hat to the assembly. "We are here to right a great wrong. A man has spent ten years in hell on earth. A potentially innocent man. We are here to finally hear the true story of Sirius Black, told under the effects of truth serum for the first time as we have come to find out that in spite of some falsified paperwork the poor man never had a trial! Guilty or innocent, that is what we are here to determine. To put it in a way that I am sure everyone in the room can understand, we are here both to find out the story of this man and to find out how a lord of our land could be thrown into the blackest pit without trial, evidence, or a chance to defend himself? Because if we do not, who will be next? Aurors, please bring in Lord Black."

Amelia silently nods. The blasted fool is generally a bane of her existence, but if he has one redeeming feature he is excellent at grandstanding and making other people afraid for their positions when he does it.

Dumbledore now understanding what is going on and being unbelievably annoyed at having to deal with this now on top of everything else, still has to do his job as the master of ceremonies. Besides, while Black didn't betray the Potters there can be no denying that he killed Peter. That no one had seen the man for ten years was proof enough of that. By itself this could perhaps be forgiven, as Peter had certainly earned such treatment. But to do so in such a way as to kill twelve poor muggles with him? People who were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time and could not defend themselves from the fury of whatever Black did to cause all that carnage? Unforgivable, and not likely to be prosecuted in this room by these pure blood politicians. That is why Albus had needed to push things through like he did. That he managed to also profit from the arrangement was immaterial. The cause was just. Much like the money that he had taken from the Potter vaults and bankrolled into a war chest for when Voldemort returned as well as scholarships for some of the more promising muggle born and half blood children. Sure, he dipped into the war chest from time to time and naturally would claim what was left when he was sure that Riddle was gone for good and Harry had shuffled the mortal coil. But frankly, was that too much reward for a man that will have by than saved the wizarding world twice? No, Albus doesn't think so. Oh dear. Lucius is standing. "The Wizengamot recognizes Lucius Malfoy."

As Sirius Black is being led into the chambers, Malfoy addresses the room. His face is calm, but the sneer that is his trademark expression never wavers. "Members of the Wizengamot. Is it not true that a convicted felon loses their Lordship? As such is it not also true that as a commoner who has already been sentenced, by law new evidence must be presented to this very room before they can even be removed from Azkaban much less a trial convened? Does the department of magical law enforcement take us for such fools that we would not know our own laws, Bones? What are you playing at here?"

Amelia stands, disgust practically dripping from her body. "Lord Malfoy, perhaps your hearing is failing you. Did the Minister of Magic not just say that there was no previous trial. As such, he is still the Lord Black, held against his will for a decade. For that reason alone this trial must take place. Moreover, I would ask that you refrain from further commenting or taking part in this trial. Your connection to the Black family is well known, as your wife has had a very difficult time hiding her giddiness that with Lord Black's incarceration your son was due to inherit. To say that you are biased is an understatement. I had considered not mentioning this, but with your own words here you have proven that you are unable to act impartially. Retire to the gallery."

The look of shock on the face of Lucius is enough to make Harry stifle a grin, though Sirius doesn't bother and adds a sharp, barking laugh to go with it.

Albus looks around the assembly. "Does anybody else have anything they wish to add before this trial is to be underway?"

Everyone waits for a minute as the Aurors chain Sirius to the judgment chair. Finally, when the silence becomes oppressive as Albus waits for any voice to be heard, Sirius finally groans and rattles his chains. "C'mon people. Gimme my three drops, I've been behind bars for ten years. Not interested in being chained for ten more."

This time Amelia has to stifle her grin. "Auror Shacklebolt, apply the veritaserum to the suspect."

As Shacklebolt approaches, Sirius sticks his tongue out like a hungry baby bird, mouth open, and makes little sucking sounds with his throat. When it is administered, he smacks his lips twice and was likely on his way to say something that could only get him in trouble when his face goes slack.

Amelia walks up to the prisoner with a parchment, a smile that could only be described as wickedly playful fighting to take over the corners of her mouth.

"Prisoner, state your name for the court."

"Lord Sirius Orion Black."

"Did you betray the Potters to Lord Voldemort at any time."

"Not intentionally."

When he says this, the courtroom erupts into murmurs, and Harry feels his heart drop through to the floor. Albus, oddly, perks right up and has to make an effort not to smile."

Amelia frowns. "Explain that."

"When they were putting up the Fidelius charm to hide the themselves, they wanted to make me the secret keeper. I thought I would be far to obvious a choice, and convinced them to use Peter Pettigrew instead thinking that he would be able to hide better than I would anyway. I then made talk as though it was me to throw Voldemort's people off the trail. I was wrong. Peter was a traitor, and because of this my friends are dead."

Amelia's eyes are beginning to glisten as she can see the pain on his face even through the truth serum. "But you yourself did not personally lead the Dark Lord to them?"

"No."

Damn, thought Dumbledore. Now I am down to convincing these people that the life of a muggle is worth sending a lord to prison. I may as well declare the trial over now.

Amelia continues.

"Did you confront Pettigrew on the second of November on a crowded muggle street?"

"Yes."

"What action did you take?"

The courtroom grows so quiet, that Harry swears he can hear his own heartbeat.

"I attempted to stun him, and missed. Then I asked him why he betrayed us."

Amelia looks around the courtroom, as if to determine that everyone is listening.

"What did Pettigrew do?"

Albus is hanging on every word. This is not what he expected to hear.

"Pettigrew yelled that I had betrayed the Potters, then sent a blasting curse at a muggle lorry that was carrying propane. It exploded, nearly killing me as well as actually killing bunch of muggles. It wrecked the street and a few storefronts. Then he used a cutting curse to remove a finger, shifted to his animagus form of a rat, and fled through the sewers."

At this there is a roar throughout the Wizengamot, people talking over each other and the flashbulbs of the Prophet photographers going off like firecrackers. It is perhaps forgivable that most didn't notice Amelia stepping forward and casting something, then speaking to Black. Dumbledore however, did. While he desperately wanted to know what the Director wanted to ask the man under truth serum without the rest of the Wizengamot knowing, he knew that charging down there would be a terrible idea as his goose was nearly cooked already despite his best efforts, and even being a member of the court wouldn't excuse contempt of court. Very quickly, Bones backs away and with a swish of her wand, cancels whatever privacy ward she had thrown up. Albus tries to get order in the court while Shacklebolt administers the potion to end the effects of the serum.

Fudge decides that this is an ideal time to see to it that the reporters remember his name. "Given what we have just heard I think it is safe to say the man is innocent. As I would not wish there to be anything hanging over the man later, however, I am calling for a vote! Yes, a vote of the Wizengamot! I urge you to vote with your conscience, and ignore the reporters in the room."

At that, a half a dozen members of the assembly that had been glaring at Black the entire time suddenly paled, and when Albus called for the white lights of not guilty, there was no point in calling for the red. With his chains undone, Sirius blinks and turns towards Amelia, who merely laughs at him, and points towards Harry in the Gallery.

Albus is beside himself. Sirius innocent? Truly innocent? But that would mean... No. No, given the information he had at the time, the call he made was the correct one. Unfortunate that Sirius had to pay for Albus' mistake, but truly, having Harry raised by the man would likely have caused problems the likes of which wizarding Britain wouldn't have survived. The choice, while regrettable, was still the best one to be made at the time. Albus will have to find a way to make it up to him, but to admit fault outright would be to go a step too far. For the greater good, it had to happen that way. Now he just needs to declare Black an unfit parental figure for reason of dementor exposure. Not tough to do, dementors were known to be detrimental to the mental health of the people placed in Azkaban even for a short time. After ten years, Black was probably about to crack like an overripe watermelon dropped off the astronomy tower. But that will have to be a task for another day. Now he needs to end this session. Gringotts will be expecting him in an hour, and he has a stop or three to make on the way. Now he just needs to figure out how to distract or call in a favor on Alastor. He needs to somehow use his rights as magical guardian respected and get the boy over there. His attempts to get the Wizengamot as a whole to collude with him regarding this issue has been like pulling teeth, and nothing is going to be decided in time. It will have to be the boy.

"If that is all that we had on the docket today, I declare this session..."

Amelia interrupts him at this time. "Chief Mugwump, I have a second item that needs looked at today. Shacklebolt, bring in the noted parties."

With this, Shacklebolt heads to the staging room and brings out a thoroughly annoyed Nigel Thornwood.

"Amelia, what is the meaning of this? I already gave my statement. Under veritaserum, I might add. Voluntarily! Why am I being brought before the Wizengamot?"

Albus looks over her glasses at Amelia, not noticing while he grandstands the Wizengamot that Shacklebolt has waved down Harry Potter, and Lepenski is wheeling in the giant stone bowl that is the ministry pensieve. "Amelia, the man has a point. Is there new evidence? If not I fear I will have to end this now."

Amelia smiles a decidedly predatory smile, and Albus can't help but feel that somehow he is on the menu as much as Thornwood is. When he sees Harry walking down and sitting in a witness chair opposite Thornwood, little alarm bells start sounding in his head. When he sees the pensieve, the bells become a klaxon. "Indeed, Albus. New evidence is exactly what you could call this. Lord Potter, did they explain how to use the pensieve?"

Harry nods. "Yes Madam Bones. Should I put my memory in now?"

"Go ahead, I will explain the facts to everybody while you do so."

Thornwood looks confused, but it is Albus that speaks first. "Amelia, Harry is a fine young lad but he is no more a lord than he is a unicorn. As such, the laws state that he cannot use the pensieve in this way. For good or ill, I am going to have to put a stop to this."

Amelia casts a spell that causes her voice to boom over the room of people that, while interested, had began chattering amongst each other. Holding out her wand, she intones: "As Director of Magical Law Enforcement I swear on my life and magic that the following testimony of mine is true to the best of my current knowledge, so mote it be." With a flash of light as the oath takes hold. The court is now enraptured. A vow on life and magic could see a new head of the DMLE by tonight.

Amelia continues, voice still booming over the Wizengamot. "First, the court should know that Lord Potter is just that." She passes the first parchments to Dumbledore to peruse, and the old mans face goes ashen as he reads them. "As per the Gringotts blood test for succession, Harry Potter is not only Lord Potter, but also Lord Gryffindor by blood through his father, and Lord Slytherin by conquest through his mother. It would seem that it was something Lily did, rather than Harry, that brought the Dark Lord down ten years ago, and when she died she passed it on to him. Second, the court needs to be aware that due to a soul bond marriage arrangement between Lord Potter and his wife, Alice Liddell Potter, he is considered an adult by law and magic, and able to take up these titles." Amelia pauses for a second as Thornwood starts to turn green. "Finally, the court should know that I brought Harry into the Wizengamot yesterday to meet with his godfather, Lord Black, before the trial we just witnessed. When I did so, at his request I glamored him to look like his wife so we would not be mobbed here in the ministry. Therefore Thornwood, it was Lord Potter, Not Alice, that was in that room, and he is both capable and allowed by our laws to have evidence entered by way of a pensieve." With that, Amelia lowers her wand, signifying the end of the statements that are bound to her vow. By then, Harry had already placed his memory in the pensieve. Rather than wait to be asked, he just turns it on and a three dimensional representation twelve feet across is projected above it, complete with surround sound. The image starts as they are exiting the cell block, and Thornwood makes a break for the doors to the Wizengamot as the alarm goes off that caused Amelia to have to send Harry on alone. He doesn't get far, three steps from the witness chair he suddenly stiffens with his arms to his sides and his feel slapped together, crashing face first into the floor where his nose hits with an audible crunching sound. Moody clears his throat. "Lord Potter, could you back it up? I missed a bit."

Smiling and nodding, Harry taps the rune to reverse it fifteen seconds, and when it continues and the entire Wizengamot sees and hears what happened, there are questions but none concerning who the guilty parties are. In fact, the looks being sent to Thornwood even by many of the more traditionally dark representatives could only be called disgusted. Whether that is because he did these horrible things or because his assassin and then himself were outwitted by a child is anybodies guess. Those more leaning toward the light start demanding that the man be brought to trial for attempted murder, which Amelia happily obliges, saying that his trial will be scheduled for sometime next week.

Harry unfortunately doesn't seem to be in a sharing mood. After the third question regarding how he had done what he did in the pensieve memory, his response goes from the "No comment" it had been to "Next week are we going to be putting you in the hot seat to divulge your family secrets and magics? If not then we are done here." With no takers, and a number of the more traditional members of the Wizengamot giving baleful looks to the upstarts that were so determined to get to the bottom of how that they tried to stomp on a Lords right to defend himself, things calm down.

With that Harry stands and starts walking towards Sirius. Sitting back down in the gallery, he waits while Dumbledore wraps things up. Then he turns to Sirius as he can no longer stave off his curiosity, as like Dumbledore he was paying close attention the entire time that Black was in the chair. "What did she ask you at the end?"

Sirius looks at Harry and his face breaks into a half grin. "The evil little witch asked if I still fancy her."

Harry can't help it and laughs, but does manage to stutter in a "What was your answer?"

Sirius fakes a groan and dramatically points down at the courtroom floor. "Look at the sneaky little shrew and take a guess!"

Harry looks down in time to see Amelia blowing Sirius a kiss. He can't help it, and the laughter starts up again. Oddly, Sirius would swear he hears more than just Harry laughing and the second voice sounds like a damn pixie.

HaA

Authors Note:

THANK GOD. Finally done with the current crap in the ministry. By that I mean the stuff that Harry and Alice will have to take direct part in. Moving forward, most ministry stuff for a while will be second hand from Amelia. To say that this batch of ministry crap took longer than I thought it would is the understatement of the century.

From a storytelling standpoint though I had a few goals I needed to accomplish.

Sirius: Free.

Amelia: Established as a member of team good guys and also willing to pull a fast one on Sirius. A requirement for dating a marauder.

Alice: Established as a nice, kind, loyal, and a cutthroat little psychotic that will kill if pushed regardless of the circumstances.

Lepenski: Gotten enough screen time that hopefully even though she is an original character you will remember enough about her to not curse my name when she shows up.

Harry: Still trying to be a "good" guy in the face of the world being almost entirely populated by assholes.

Dumbledore: Some of his motivations revealed. Like I said in the Authors Notes at the end of chapter four. In this story Dumbles isn't evil. He isn't really good in a traditional sense either, in spite of what he thinks. What he is basically boils down to a little bit greedy and self serving combined with a lot of knowledge, experience, and a masters degree at rationalization that he uses to make the bulk of his decisions. The vast majority of the time, they come out okay. Occasionally, he screws the pooch and like many powerful people, when he does the poor animal pays the price instead of him. Believe it or not, this isn't really a Dumbledore bashing story. This is me taking the evidence presented in the books and desperately trying to figure out what kind of man would do all the things that Dumbledore did. This is what I have come up with. Then of course, I changed the circumstances when I brought in Alice, but left Dumbledore the same. We'll see what happens.

Lastly, I know that Amelia and Sirius has been done to death in Fan Fiction. It is a pairing that I tend to like because I think they are good for each other. But I also think that in order for any woman to be attracted to Sirius Black for more than the length of time it takes to recover from the hangover that resulted from them being brought them together in the first place, they would need a bit of a sneaky, devil may care, prankster side to them even if it didn't get out very often. In these stories I love that put these two together, she is rarely shown to be like that. It makes me crazy. Amelia asking Sirius that while he was doped to the gills, in front of the entire ministry, during his trial, and when he couldn't lie to her was both the quickest way she could think of to try to pick up where they left off... and the best prank that had been played since the marauders were in Hogwarts. She did it that way to make a statement that she was ready for him, and trusted his own sense of humor to not be too upset if his answer was no.

Later all.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Listen up, class.

With an escort of Moody, Amelia, and Sirius getting back to the atrium was astonishingly easy. Between Amelia's stoic gaze through her monocle, Sirius flipping his wand about in his fingers like a pint sized baton while wearing a smile that screamed of ten years worth of pain he wished to share, and Mad-Eye stalking along behind them wearing a scowl that could eviscerate the unworthy at thirty paces, the people in the ministry parted like a puddle before a steamroller. When they arrive, Harry gives Sirius a quick hug and then floos back to Bones Manor while Sirius and Amelia go to St. Mungos so he can get more thoroughly checked out.

Once they are gone Moody gives the atrium a quick once over and when he sees Albus on the far side of the room with his magical eye, hiding behind a notice-me-not charm that has been cranked up to ridiculous heights, he walks over to his old friend. When Albus sees him coming over a slight stiffening of his spine is the only evidence that he offers that he had intended to be hidden from Mad-Eye as well.

"Alastor. By chance do you happen to know where young Potter has run off to? There are things I simply must discuss with him, duties that he must perform for the good of us all." Knowing better than to try to magically pressure the tough old Auror, Albus is offering an apologetic smile and nod. If it came to a true test of magical might, Albus is certain that he is the more powerful wizard. He is also undeniably the more highly educated of the two, and an argument could be made for being the more intelligent. But even were they alone, even if Albus did not truly feel that the man in front of him is his friend, which he most certainly does, he would hesitate to try to ever force things with Alastor. Albus is an exceptional duelist, with power to spare and even in his advanced years speed with a wand that few can match. With his personal wand being a powerful artifact in its own right that practically guarantees victory though, even with that he would be loath to be in conflict with his friend for more than reasons of fondness. At heart though he can be quite dangerous, Albus is an educator. Teaching and administration, occasional forays into politics being his admittedly full time hobby in his old age. Before him stands a man that has all the skills, demeanor, respect, and lest we forget authority of an Auror that has spent nigh on fifty years tracking, disabling and killing things in the magical world. Primarily other wizards and witches. His motto of 'Constant Vigilance' and his unspoken creed of 'strike first, strike hard, regret later' had kept him on the winning end of conflicts that Albus knows he would have been unlikely to survive merely due to finding killing so distasteful that even faced with death he cannot bring himself to do it. So when Alastor finally locks his good eye with Albus, the older man feels a pain that seems to strike at his very soul. The two have been friends for many years, and known each other for even more.

Moody is looking at him as though he is a stranger.

"Albus, I don't know exactly what all is going on between you and Gringotts. But if that twelve year old boy is the cause of it, I'll eat my eye. Stay away from him and handle your own damn problems, Potter has plenty of his own without your help finding more. I mean it, Albus. The matter has been brought to Bones and she is offering ministry protection and escorts for the new Lord 'til he gets his legs. Interference in his life is not going to help you do whatever it is you need done. It'll land you an overnight stay in a ministry holding cell at the least." Moody starts to back away, and Albus is crushed to see that he is not turning his back as he does so. What had his friend been told, that his trust would fall so far and so fast? "I mean it Albus, leave the boy alone." Once at the corner to enter the ministry proper, Alastor is quickly out of sight.

Albus stares at the corner where Mood left for a long moment, then uses the floo himself to go to the Alley. A quick bite to eat at the cauldron before he makes the long walk to Gringotts to see what he has left after the Goblins are done pillaging his and the school's vaults. If what happened is what he expects, then having to come into the Wizengamot next week, hat in hand, and beg for ministry funds to be able to keep the school open is a situation he is not sure his tenure as headmaster can survive. But it must. Being headmaster while Harry Potter is a student there is essential to the safety of the Wizarding world. He will have to find a way to make it happen.

HaA

Amelia arrives home fairly early on Friday evening but aside from saying that Black was going to be on a potion regimen and behind heavy isolation wards for the next week while they tried to undo many of the physical and mental problems that had cropped up during his stay in Azkaban she doesn't have much to say about the trial. She never quite loses the little smirk that plays about on the edge of her lips, however. She does tell Harry and Alice that he will be staying at Bones Manor in a guest room once he is released from the hospital until he can get his family home fit to live in, or to be sold if he decides to purchase other property. Apparently he is expecting it to be fairly bad given the way things were going the last time he was there and the fact that it has been abandoned for eight years.

Saturday comes and goes with little fanfare. Amelia ends up having to spend some of the morning at the ministry due to a small mob of people having caused trouble in Diagone Alley the night before. Mostly because of the fact that the Bank is willing to either press charges for the destruction of their property or take maters into their own hands, and as soon as that missive was handed to Minister Fudge he panicked all over himself, demanded Amelia come in, and using his powers as the minister reduced all of the crimes of Delores Umbridge to a singe fine to be paid to the ministry. While a large enough fine to make most willing to slide things under the rug, the entire thing infuriates most of the Aurors under Amelia. Both because of their shoddy treatment at her hands over the years and because they know that under truth serum they would have gotten so much more out of her.

By Sunday, things have well and truly calmed down and even Amelia manages to get a day off. So at lunch, she decides it is time.

"So, Alice, before you two lovebirds run off to Gringotts tomorrow to buy your new home and disappear into a life of wedded bliss, would you be willing to tell me how you managed to create a potion that made you so tiny? I can see a market for things like that, especially in my line of work."

Alice looks up from her meal, which consists of a single hazelnut, a cheddar flavored soup cracker, one section of a mandarin orange, and a thimble full of milk. She doesn't expect to be able to eat anywhere near that much but the Bones family house elf that handled lunch apparently refuses to serve smaller portions. Setting aside the cracker for the milk to clear her throat from the dry fare, she responds. "I am afraid that I won't be able to be of much use to your Aurors, Madam Bones. The concoctions that I create for my own use will likely respond poorly if imbibed by another. They are tailored to me."

Amelia grimaces, looking unsurprised but less than pleased. "I expected that might be the case. I take it that you worked out these recipes while you were trapped in your mirror then?"

Alice nods. "Indeed Madam Bones that is the case. As I told Harry when he made his own request along these lines, my legitimate magical schooling is essentially nothing. My prison spent many years in Hogwarts and I was able to pick up a fairly decent grounding by listening in, year after year, but sadly potions may be the subject in which I am the most ignorant of the way things are supposed to be done. The mirror was never near the potions classroom, and because it is all labs it was discussed the least outside of that room. What I know is merely what I picked up from idle chatter among students and professors, and a bit here and there from before the mirror found itself in the school at all. In fact, because of where my prison was located, there are really only two subjects that I feel confident about, and sadly neither are even part of the basic magical education. Were I to join Harry at Hogwarts this fall, which is what Harry would seem to prefer despite my best advice, I would be unable to take advantage of the knowledge I do possess until at least third year."

Amelia considers this. "Well, that brings to mind two things then. First, do you need to arrange a tutor to get you up to speed before September, and second, what two classes do you consider yourself educated in?"

Harry perks up at this. Alice has always seemed so knowledgeable compared to him that it never even occurred to him to ask.

"A tutor is something that we have discussed and will likely be required, yes. As to the other, given that I have effectively taken all seven years of class lectures more than fifty times as well as listened in on every NEWT preparation class, innumerable study groups, and between class question and answer sessions, I would be comfortable challenging the Arithmancy and Ancient Runes classes outright without any significant fears, once I had the opportunity to study a few textbooks. I have managed to work out the proper design of many runes and equations, but my own notes are incomplete as I was unable to see what they looked like and had to fill in the holes as detailed descriptions happened to occur in class. Additionally, for a time Hogwarts had an elective for NEWT students that concerned wards as a subset of the ancient runes curriculum. I am much less confident in this instance due partly to the fact that it has been thirty years since I was in a room that it was taught, but also again because my knowledge of runes is less than truly complete. Given a few texts and a bit of time to brush up, I feel I could likely challenge this as well."

"So, what is involved with those two classes, anyway? I haven't dealt with them yet." Harry asks.

Alice pipes up again in her pixie voice. "Arithmancy is essentially the muggle science of chaos theory with a magical twist to it, though I recommend against telling pure bloods that. They would undoubtedly start obliviating muggle scientists randomly for the sake of the statute of secrecy or some other such nonsense. The skill has to do with predictability in complex systems and environments, though the magical community on the whole seems to think of it as some kind of subset of divination. An example would be the recent death at the ministry. The plan that led to his demise was formulated using all known facts concerning his condition, your condition, the environment, and the known predispositions of both parties, then put into place. This is a tiny, almost embarrassingly miniscule example. A true master of arithmancy can quickly determine with an astonishing level of accuracy the landing spot of every spark after a cutting curse of a specific intensity is used against a precise point on a steel drum. While it has many uses outside of magic, the reason that it is studied at Hogwarts is due to it being the foundation of new spell creation. The ability to predict the outcome of magical forces against each other and the physical environment is essential when fiddling about with new magics. Because it is used this way, it is possible using arithmancy to completely break down a spell and its effects using only arithmantic shorthand, which allows for bits and pieces of different spells to be spliced together in theory and then used to new effect. Grand masters have been known to use this ability on the fly, essentially making up new spells at will with all the math already done in their head. Sadly, whether I am that accomplished or not will take years to determine because my grounding in the wand based magic that this is based on is at best abysmal. I know many theories, but with no practical experience it will be awhile before that matters."

At some point during her explanation, Amelia stopped stirring her tea. Hand still on the spoon, she sits there and listens. She knew what arithmancy was. Had even toyed around with taking the class when she was at Hogwarts herself. She probably would have if it had been explained to her by Alice, who seems to know the topic better than anybody Amelia has ever known.

Harry is enthralled. While it is obviously an enormous amount of work, this seems like it would be fascinating stuff to learn.

Susan, who walked in as this explanation was getting started, has yet to begin to eat. She was far too distracted by this tiny girl apparently teaching a most interesting class while sitting on their dining room table.

Alice continues after a quick drink and a nibble off of her hazelnut. "Ancient Runes is essentially the study of deceased languages that use alternate forms of scripture. The reason that it is important to magic is that this scripture can be used and imbued with magical intent. What they don't teach anymore, apparently by ministerial decree, is that any script can be used to focus magical intent assuming that the basic foundations that govern magic and the way it interacts with intent and runes themselves are observed. The reason for using known sets of ancient runes is so that others can understand and assist, deal with or use what you have done. Runes can be set in an item to accomplish nearly any effect as long as the language exists within the runes that you know. The problem is that a runes master that doesn't wish others to be able to pick apart their rune sets will simply design their own language to be used. This will then require anyone wishing to understand or dismantle such a device or ward to either destroy the item itself, or first translate the script and overpower the magic used. This is what I have done for my tools and weapons. Using a combination of arithmancy to predict and design what was needed and runic script of my own creation, I devised rune sets that would allow the items I had dreamed up in my less lucid period to function in the real world."

Harry is astonished. He genuinely believed that ancient runes would be the less interesting of the two and instead it sounds even better than arithmancy!

Amelia Bones is looking at this currently tiny creature with a whole new respect. She is oddly, but highly educated. Powerful in her own right and has no problem at all with doing what is needed quickly, concisely, and with lethal force if the situation requires it. She has a highly developed sense of right and wrong, and is categorically against bigotry and abuse of power, willing to fight tooth and nail against both. In short, she is dangerous, smart, fair minded, and quick on her feet. Even more so on all counts than Bones first believed.

She would make an outstanding Auror.

"What are some of these tools you have made? I can understand not wishing to show the Wizengamot, but I would like to believe that I have earned a little trust."

She is so tiny that the cocked eyebrow is almost impossible to see. "I suppose that is fair, Madam Bones. I would imagine that Harry would appreciate a bit of show and tell as well. If you don't mind however, I think I will stay this size for the demonstration in an effort to keep the damages to a minimum. Would that be acceptable?"

At Amelia's nod, Alice pulls out the vorpal blade. "This modest bit of steel and wood is my weapon of choice for most circumstances. I call it the Vorpal Blade as it is not large enough to be called a sword. Madam Bones, would you be so kind as to summon a cube of steel six inches to a side, placed on your side of the table?"

Seeing that this has been accomplished, Alice flings the blade at the cube, hitting it dead center where it sinks into the metal to the hilt. After a few seconds, it fades from view and the three people looking on see it reappear in her hand. "Using runes, I have added a degree of indestructibility to this and all my items, really. It possesses a rune which amplifies force a thousand fold, yet that force cancels should anything impact the handle. Lastly, of course, you can see that it will return to me after being removed from my presence for a few seconds. Disarming me is a colossal waste of time. I hesitate to say it can cut through anything, but if there is a substance that would stop the blade I have yet to come across it."

She replaces the vorpal blade behind her back and pulls out a short staff with what seems to be a large but delicate bluish white crystal formation on the end. "This I call the 'Ice Wand.' You will have to forgive me, when I came up with the inspiration for this design and subsequently named it, I had yet to be exposed to the wand wavers of Britain." She points it at her empty thimble and after a couple of seconds of blasting cold, the item is trapped in a large block of ice as tall as Alice is. "I think the reason for the naming convention should be obvious. I can also use it to place a temporary wall." When she does so, and a four inch tall wall is seemingly blasted onto the center of the table, Amelia's eyes widen. "Yes, madam Bones. This was the tool I used in the ministry. At first I had hoped that killing him might be avoided, but when he proved to be so vicious that he decided to attack us even blind I felt I could not in good conscience allow him to continue. I would be curious what you found in his house, as I know you would have searched it."

"Nothing good." Is Amelia's only response. When nothing more is forthcoming, Alice shrugs.

"I suppose I could show you one more today. Just a toy, really. But not a particularly friendly one." With that she replaces the ice wand and pulls out a handful of jacks and a rubber ball, all of it so tiny that it can barely be seen. Alice considers for a moment. "Amelia, would your house elves be able to supply us with a freestanding gelatin dessert on a steel tray that you don't mind getting scratched, and if you could supply a bright light for the demonstration please."

With a snap of phantom fingers, a red gelatin appears with whipped topping. Amelia supplies the brightest light spell she can muster, with a muttered "Lumos."

Once everything is set, Alice casually tosses the lot onto the tray. The rubber ball defies physics immediately, as instead of bouncing and continuing on, it begins to bounce straight up and down in the spot where it first hit. As it does so, the handful of five small sharp metal bits that went with it start bouncing around themselves, always remaining within a foot of the bouncing red ball and moving with such force and speed that the gelatin they ordered is slowly shredded before them, becoming a spreading pile of red mush where the gelatin once was. The tiny sparks that fly off of the tray give testimony to the force being applied. As the three watch this with their eyes wide, Alice sits back down and begins eating. After a few minutes of watching their desert get liquified and the tray become pitted and holed in places, the slightest whistle is barely heard. The rubber ball gracefully arcs back to Alice's hand, followed by the jacks themselves, which spin themselves clean before landing gently in her hand to be put away.

"The function of the blade is obvious. The Ice Wand is mostly a defensive tool, though if held on a living creature too long it will freeze them solid. The Jacks I used when I needed an area that could not be crossed without grievous injury. At full size, they are very quickly lethal."

Harry seems excited by the whole thing, eyes bright and exclaiming that all three were brilliant. Susan looks a little sick to her stomach.

Amelia simply looks impressed.

"One wonders where the runes are on that last one." Amelia ponders, still staring at the ruined gelatin as it suddenly vanishes only to be replaced by another, this one in pristine condition.

Alice nods, understanding the curiosity. "It wasn't easy, I'll admit. But when they are normal size and I am this size it is easy enough to do. The rubber ball was a bit more difficult, but the runes on it are actually against the side of a small iron core in the center of the rubber. Mostly it was just time consuming, since each piece needed its own set of runes, and each set had to include runes to work with every other piece. All told it was months to design and perhaps a day for each item's runes. Mayhaps a week to finish the entire project once the design was finalized?"

Amelia turns to face Alice. "Why would you need such things? What happened to you in that mirror?"

Alice gives the slightest shrug ever seen on the slightest frame ever known. "It wasn't the fault of the mirror, really. The mirror showed me what it thought I wanted, and it thought that because I was insane at the time. Much of my childhood was spent in my own world of dreams and make believe, and after the fire that killed my family the dreams became nightmares. But still, in some twisted way, they were what I wanted. As horrible as they were, they were known, whilst everything and everywhere else was cruel and strange. The mirror knew enough to recognize this, but was not truly an intelligent artifact. Rather it borrowed the intelligence of others. I still do not know how I ended up trapped in the damnable thing, though my pet theory is that the same ability that allows me to cancel my potions somehow effected the function of the mirror long enough to cause that malfunction. But once I was inside it continued to give me what it thought I wanted. The world of my nightmares."

Alice looks down, and is quiet for a short time while the rest of the room digests this horror.

When she looks back up, she appears tired, and it shows easily even with their size discrepancy. Getting to her feet and making a short walk to where Harry is sitting. "The short answer, Director Bones, is that they were created by necessity. As time passed and my mind became less clouded, things in the mirror did improve. But to say it was ever safe would be a lie. I did what I had to do to survive."

Then she climbs up Harry and lays down against his neck, closing her eyes.

By unspoken agreement, it is decided that lunch is over. Harry leaves to take a nap, holding a hand cupped protectively over Alice as he does.

The elves are irritated that nobody ate any of either Gelatin, but have come to expect strangeness from this lot.

HaA

Author's Note:

Kind of a short chapter, you'll have to forgive me. I needed to handle one last tiny bit of Ministry business, the confrontation between Albus and Alastor. After that I decided to sate a bit of Amelia's curiosity about Alice's toys and hopefully everybody's curiosity about Alice's history with the mirror. The magic lesson got thrown in as a freebie because I needed to explain how Alice was creating magical artifacts that were so far advanced when she can't even levitate a feather yet.

Hope it wasn't too boring.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Flamels and Floos

With Amelia lending a hand they were easily able to meet with Grimknott at the site of the property that he was recommending at noon on Monday. Built on a hill, the house itself is not quite large enough to scream excessive to anyone looking at it but it certainly approaches that level. What they find when they enter is that the hill upon which it stands hides a lot of the splendor of the structure as seen from the street. With ten bedrooms, a casual as well as formal dining area, an industrial grade kitchen as well as a kitchenette attached to three of the bedrooms including the master, the more common utilities and functions are all easily handled. Among the more exotic features included is a living room large enough to double as a small ballroom, a modestly sized indoor pool, small bathrooms attached to every bedroom and a community bathhouse that looks as though it could comfortably accommodate twenty within is rose colored granite tub. Finally, a game room that includes both a billiards table and a complete two lane bowling alley with ball return and automatic pin setters, among other distractions.

This is, of course, all before the vault like doors to the shelter are opened.

Currently the shelter area is quite spartan, with limited furnishings and poor lighting on the whole. Grimknott assures them that this will be easy to fix within the week however, and after making sure that the requests that they have concerning defense wards and the floo area can be accommodated, Harry gives the go ahead to make the purchase. Told by Grimknott that the place should be ready to move into by the end of July with all of their requested renovations, Amelia reassures them that they would be more than welcome to stay with her until that time. Finally they make their way back to the Bones residence to spend the day chatting with Susan while Amelia has a quick bite to eat and then returns to work. They are apparently doing the millimeter by millimeter search of the Crouch residence that day while Barty is stuck in the day long emergency Wizengamot session dealing with the fallout from the actions of Gringotts the week before.

Also along with Monday comes the first full page story in the Daily Prophet concerning the soul bond and subsequent Marriage of Harry Potter and Alice Liddell. The flailing of the reporters trying to find out who Alice is and finally making less and less likely guesses as the days go on was to plague the couple for quite some time.

Tuesday finds the three children, Alice, Harry, and Susan, in Diagone Alley where they are pawing through the shelves of Flourish and Blotts, the local bookseller. Alice, now at her normal size, has decided not to bother with picking up the first year course books as she will merely borrow Harry's copies for the next week to catch up. But she is quite interested in getting her hands on the five years worth of books for arithmancy and ancient runes, and considering that money is no object and she and Harry are now able to do magic outside of school, also makes it a point to pick up last years course books for second, third, and fourth year as well. If it happens that the books they wish to use should change this year, it would be no hardship to pick up the new material. More importantly, Alice is more aware than most that when it comes to magical education, "new" very rarely translates to "better" or even "as good." The only thing that surprises Harry is that in addition to getting all of the above, she also gets a copy of every alchemy text the store has. In the end, the library trunk that they purchased in the alley before this expedition began is nearly a quarter full of texts, and it is only by the grace of the space enlarging, lightening, and shrinking charms that it comes with that they are able to easily move it about at all. When they are once again alone in the manor that night, Harry decides to ask why the alchemy texts so intrigued her. She gives him a considering look, then reaches behind her back and pulls out of her creepy skull the red rock that Harry knows so well from the night that they met. Whispering, Harry's voice takes on a squeak that wasn't there before.

"You stole the philosophers stone? What were you thinking? Nicholas Flamel will die without that thing!"

Putting the stone away while Harry sputters, her response is in a near monotone that bears the merest hint of condescension. "If I stole it, then it was from the pocket of my husband to be who had recently purloined the item himself from an unlawful prison in which I was confined. I might add that this was immediately after I destroyed a dark lord, preventing him from getting his maniacal little paws on it. Do not tempt to take the moral high ground from me, Harry Potter. The mire your good intentions thrived in that night won't allow such an ascension. The only person involved that has any possibility of being innocent in the whole mess is Flamel himself, and it is for that reason I took the thing from you in the first place, to keep it safe. Admittedly I intend to learn something from it first, hence the books, and before I found out that I was wealthy I had considered attempting to use it to achieve some level of self sufficiency. But my intention is to owl post Flamel within the next week or two to let him know his property has survived. What do you suppose Dumbledore might have done with the thing had he the possibility of hanging onto it without suspicion? The only redeeming feature of the man seems to be that he is old and should die soon, why would I wish to risk that changing?"

Harry reddens in embarrassment at Alice's words. "I am sorry, Alice. I know you better than that, I don't know what I was thinking. I should have asked instead of assuming the worst."

Alice nods in agreement. "Yes, you should have. But I understand why you responded like you did. It isn't as though you have too many examples of good people in your life, and I am still uncertain I would qualify as one even if you did. Giving others the benefit of your trust without the toil it takes to earn that gift is a policy that is doomed to a failure full of pain, accusation, and recrimination. Furthermore, I will admit that my moral compass is perhaps a bit skewed. Many long years of being selfish by necessity in the face of immense danger has taken its toll. But you should know that I'll never lie or keep secrets from you. The vow I took won't allow it, even should I desire to. Which I do not. The only reason I hadn't brought up the stone before is merely because it hadn't come up. I suppose I assumed you already knew I had it."

With that, the two murmur some heartfelt apologies and prepare for bed, The feeling of closeness and acceptance as they lay together washing away any leftover hurt feelings like a sidewalk chalk masterpiece in a monsoon.

HaA

The next few weeks slip into a very comfortable routine. Every morning over breakfast, Amelia offers her advice on what the children should study during the day after having gotten Susan a ministerial exemption from the underage magic laws due to the head of Magical Law Enforcement being her legal guardian. The children dedicate the morning to studies and they find that while Alice has by far the most knowledge of magical theory, she was quite correct regarding her skill with a wand. Harry, being a prodigy at Defense Against the Dark Arts and a fair hand at the practical aspects of Charms and Transfiguration has found himself in the position of essentially tutoring Alice in the subjects. Susan has no particularly outstanding talents, but is in the top thirty percent of her year in every subject. A result of having spent a lifetime surrounded by bored Aurors who were willing to chat with a precocious youth, and generally while they were stuck on bodyguard detail of one sort or another for any number of public functions that Susan had been drug to on a weekly basis since she was a baby. In the afternoon, Alice alternates between her studies into Flamel's stone and her own arithmancy and rune texts, while Harry spends some time pouring over the 'Aurors Manual of Ministry Approved Combat, Offensive and Defensive Spells.' that Amelia has given him to look over as part of his eventual path to join her department should he so desire. His alternate is to spend time flying on his broom, which he does occasionally manage to get Alice to join him on. In the evening Amelia offers assistance on anything that the children were having trouble with and talks about the goings on in the ministry, which are far more amusing to the children than they are to Amelia who has had to live it.

Sadly, much of the news is not good. When the Crouch residence was searched, Mad-Eye reported things that were not adding up correctly. Too much food being purchased for a single resident, wards that recognized two people permanently there as well as a house elf that they were never able to locate that seemed to be avoiding them. Multiple secret chambers in the house, at least one of which had obviously had someone living in it recently. When they had enough evidence to pump the old man full of truth serum, the crimes he admitted to in front of the Wizengamot would almost have been enough to pull the looks of disdain away from Dumbledore, had it not been proven that Dumbledore was involved. Amelia and Lepenski, it would seem, were correct. Dumbledore had pushed for Black to be incarcerated without trial. According to Crouch under truth serum, this was based on the fact that the darker pure blood members of the Wizengamot would be unlikely to be bothered by the deaths of the Potters, Pettigrew, or muggles, and the house of Black would be a political powerhouse that could be used nefariously if the murderous young lord had felt beholden to them. As for the oddities at the Crouch residence, the suspicions of Lepenski were proven to be half right. Crouch had broken his son out of Azkaban and replaced his child with his wife. Not, however, due to any love for the dark lord. Instead, he had done so to honor the final request of his dying wife, the mother of his son. A mother that could not bear the thought of her son spending the rest of his life in such a place. Whatever it was that she hoped to come to pass however, it is unlikely that it included Crouch's son spending ten years being mind controlled by the Imperious Curse cast by his father, catered to by a fanatically devoted house elf that must have spirited the man away when she realized that there was no way to stay hidden from the Aurors forever. For the crimes he committed there was no doubt his punishment would be severe. But even Amelia was shocked when the Wizengamot voted for him to be kissed by a dementor to remove his soul, and the barely living remains to then be flung through the veil of death in the basement of the ministry to dispose of what is left. Breaking his only son out of prison may not have had such an impact on the trial. But the ten years of using an unforgivable curse on his own flesh and blood made an impression. Even Dumbledore reminding them that with Barty Crouch Sr. dead the house elf would transfer her complete loyalty to Jr. was not enough to stay their rage long enough to spare the man.

Umbridge being exonerated of all wrong doing after paying her fine did not cause her to forget the supposedly unconscionable indignities she received at the hands of law enforcement, and has since made it a point to question everything done in Amelia's department. While it is annoying, Amelia denies being too concerned about it. When Harry asks why, she just laughs and says that they expected that something like this would happen, and left a few things to be used at a later date. Apparently they didn't bother to charge her with all they had gathered on her, setting aside a few of the more heinous bits of intelligence for a rainy day so that a single ministerial pardon couldn't clear her of everything.

The most interesting bit to Harry and Alice is that Dumbledore's problems are all coming home to roost. Due to his interference causing a catastrophic miscarriage of justice, he is removed from his seat as the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. Due to his embarrassment in the international community after the Goblins of Gringotts had made public all their claims against him, Britain had lost the seat of Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and their representative, one Albus Dumbledore, was either going to be replaced by the winter solstice or the British Wizarding Community would be without representation until they had.

Unfortunately, he managed to keep his title of headmaster. Amelia can only speculate that he had either favors owed him or blackmail material on the members of the Hogwarts School Board. It is somewhat comforting to note that he has been placed on a Sword of Damocles level probation, meaning that any evidence of further abuse of power or failure to conduct himself in a professional manner would result in immediate removal from his post.

HaA

With the routine for these two weeks broken only by the relaxation and talk of the weekend, it is almost a shock when Harry and Alice awakened on the second Saturday. While it is light outside, it is early enough that neither is ready to see the sun, and when Harry's call for mercy fails to dissuade Madam Bones, the two find themselves getting cleaned up and dressed for an early breakfast far earlier than they might have liked. Upon entering the dining room for breakfast, however, they both stand there shocked. Having only sent her owl to Flamel the night before, neither had been expecting to hear anything for at least a few days. Nobody knows where Nicholas and his wife, Perenelle, actually live but it has been assumed for many years that it was not in Britain. They didn't actually expect a response in person, either. Both of the Flamels have long been known to be reclusive to the the general public, keeping in touch with only a handful of close friends at any given time. Yet here they are. The bright smile offered by the man of average height is hidden behind a few months growth of trimmed beard, but is obviously genuine in spite of this. His immaculately presented brown hair and black silk shirt with ruffled collar are in direct contrast to the blue jeans and black tennis shoes that sit under them. Harry gulps loudly as he realizes that the face in front of him looks nearly identical to the picture on the chocolate frog card that Ron had showed him last school year, and that picture was supposed to have been taken nearly a hundred and fifty years previously. The woman at Nicholas' side almost has to be Perenelle. Her long, black, straight hair and modest but very healthy figure frame a smile and eyes that seem to be taking some joy in the look of astonishment they are getting from Harry, and the quirked eyebrow and tapping foot that Alice levels their direction. Perenelle's white silk dress and platform shoes are an odd match with Nicholas, but somehow they manage to come out of it looking like it was supposed to be that way. After a few moments, Nicholas breaks the ice.

"Here they are, the cutest little pair of sneak thieves I have ever laid my eyes upon." Whether by practice or merely as a result of his exceptionally long life, his voice seems to be accent free aside from the obvious amusement that is still infusing every syllable.

While the adults chuckle at this, and Harry goes pale at the accusation, though confused at the obvious cheerfulness of the adults, Alice has already had enough of people laughing and smiling at her expense after rudely awakening her so early in the morning.

"Am I to assume that you are Nicholas Flamel then?" At his nod, she reaches behind her back and Amelia starts to stand in a panic only to sit again when Alice pulls out not a weapon, but rather a curiously chipped red stone. "Then this belongs to you. I'll not deny I kept it to study a bit to sate my own curiosity, but you should know that it was the incompetence of Albus Dumbledore attempting to use it to lure the shade of Voldemort into the open that nearly caused you to lose it. As for your slanderous attempts to blame me for the crime, I saved your precious stone as well as the life of my husband from the dark lord when I eviscerated the fool he was possessing at the time. I do not consider any of these circumstances particularly funny. Good day." With that she places the stone on the table and walks back to the bedroom that she shares with Harry. After a mumbled apology to Amelia for the trouble and a promise to better explain things later, he leaves the three adults and their shocked expressions sitting in the dinning room. The last thing he hears as he is heading up the stairs is a woman's voice. "Amelia, you must tell us what is wrong with that child, and what has been happening with our property. What she is saying does not match what Albus has told us in the slightest."

When he enters the bedroom it is to see her removing her clothes once again and putting on her pajamas, mumbling dark sounding curses towards people that laughed at her expense. Something about a hatter and a tea party that seemed to last for a years worth of embarrassment and irritation. Harry doesn't say anything, just does the same and climbs into bed after her, to cuddle and calm her down.

HaA

When the two go down for lunch, having skipped breakfast in the hopes that Amelia's guests would be leaving afterward, they are met by two notes left on the table. The first is simply from Amelia stating that she has gone to St. Mungos to collect Sirius as he has been discharged today, and that she will explain to him why Harry was not there with her.

The second is in an envelope with a seal imprinted with the shape of an hourglass laying on its side.

Opening the letter, Harry reads it aloud.

Dear Mr and Mrs Potter.

I would like to apologize for the humorous tone with which I spoke to you. It appears that my knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the events at Hogwarts was at best incomplete and likely outright lies that I am ashamed to admit my wife and I swallowed whole. Know that nobody that lives through such events can come through unscathed and sometimes humor can help, though that does not mean that you should be forced to deal with a complete stranger poking fun at your expense. Just something to think about.

My wife and I thank you for the return of our stone. If we seemed to be in a happy mood, it was mostly due to having found somebody honest and honorable enough to return the thing to us. The loss of it wouldn't particularly effect us, aside from eventually having to track it down before some fool managed to destroy the worlds economy with it. Anyone who would believe that in six hundred years I have never bothered to create a spare is a fool. But that does not in any way diminish your actions. You kept it from harm, took the opportunity to learn what you could which is an admirable trait in the eyes of any educated man or woman, and made it a point to return it to us before the loss of it could negatively impact our lives.

I don't think you know how rare a creature you two are. No, I didn't make a mistake. There are two of you, but even if Madam Bones hadn't mentioned it, your bond was blatantly obvious to my wife who has an eye for such things. You two are definitely a single creature. Much like my wife and I are.

We spoke with Amelia at length concerning the circumstances the two of you find yourselves in. Sadly, there is little I can do politically to assist you against my former pupil, Albus. While he enjoys the power and strategy of the political arena I never have and as such have removed myself from it as the years have gone by. What I can offer the two of you is an apprenticeship upon your graduation from Hogwarts, should your interests lay that way. If not, there are many that owe me favors and I can likely get you an apprenticeship in any field of study you might desire. Please consider my offer as the next few years slip past and you find yourself getting closer to your post Hogwarts education.

Lastly, should you wish it I can make my quill available to respond to questions should you need assistance in the years to come. Pen-pals, I think is the muggle phrase these days. Should either of you need a friendly ear, feel free to write to myself of my lovely wife and we shall endeavor to be of assistance.

Respectfully yours,

Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel.

HaA

When evening comes Sirius comes to the manor with Amelia and Susan, the three of them having spent some time doing some shopping for him. The household all finds itself in the library lounging around on comfortable sofas and chairs as they talk about events and make plans for Sirius' future. All this however, happens after the introduction. Upon entering the house, Sirius casts a quick charm and in a voice that booms into every nook and cranny of the manor, calls out: "So where is this godson of mine that seems to be so taken with an older woman?!"

The two slowly descend the stairs, Harry with a hopeful smile, though cheeks reddened with embarrassment. Alice with her eyes having rolled so hard at Sirius' question that she nearly gave herself a headache.

As soon as the older man sees them coming down the stairs he cancels the charm. "Hello Harry. And you must be Alice, the young lady so taken with Prongslett here that you married him a week after you met by stitching your souls together. I must say, your taste in men does you credit." Then he offers Alice a hand to shake, which she takes. Harry standing next to her, one of his arms around her waist, helps somewhat in defusing what might have been a dicey situation. "Amelia here mentioned that the three of you kids might like some instruction over the next couple of months, and my social calender is suspiciously open. Would the assistance of this old dog meet your approval? A chance to feel useful and get to know what little family I have left wouldn't be something I would like to miss."

At Harry's happy nod and Alice's reserved one, the deal is struck as Susan had already said she was more than happy with the offer earlier in the day.

After that, the routine continued. Even moving into the new residence couldn't effect it, as Sirius moved with them and they were all keyed into the others wards, making travel between the manors a floo call away. Sirius and Amelia were stunned by the security around the floo on the new Potter estate, however.

"OK, Harry. I think I understand it, but help me out with this. You have your floo stuck in a tiny steel closet behind a vault door, in a much larger steel room that also has a vault door, and a small steel room outside that which has yet a third vault door. Why exactly?" Sirius is looking at the impressive vault doors and doesn't want to be the one to tell Harry that they could be easily gotten rid of using any number of different magics.

Harry towed his shoe into the ground with his hands clasped behind his back. "Well, the goblins said that the floo entrance was a security risk. Alice and I didn't like that, so we took steps to beef up the security on it."

Amelia has a bit more faith in the two, but is also unsure how this could be secure against a wizard or witch. "Yes, but what all does it do? Just doors?"

Harry shakes his head and answers while Alice seems to be double checking the doors themselves for something. "No, Amelia, it isn't just the doors, though they do have runes etched into the metal plates that are sandwiched together to make them and are far harder to meddle with than you might think. Alice came up with it, really. If anybody appears in the floo closet or the room before the floo chamber, the vault doors have runes that will vanish all the air in the chamber, creating a vacuum and cutting off the floo from the network. Then the system just shuts down. Can't be manipulated locally because there is no magic to muck with aside from the doors and walls being etched with runes that make them tough to get rid of. As soon as somebody opens a vault door into the chamber, they get sucked into a big steel rune reinforced room under the house wards that don't allow them to use any kind of magical travel. The vacuum prevents them from trying to speak, which should stop any kind of spell that could save them, and the whole thing just waits until someone with the clearance to do so resets the system, which is done down in the ward control room in the shelter. Hopefully we never have to use the system other than to test it, but the goblins were adamant that the floo was a security risk. I think they were pretty impressed with Alice's solution to the problem. I guess they are thinking of adding something like it to Gringotts, only theirs would just activate whenever the bank was closed."

Amelia sees Alice smile at Harry's description of their floo defense, and is again reminded that despite her apparent youth, she is not a witch to trifle with and is most definitely willing to play for keeps.

Sirius just grins.

HaA

Authors Note.

OK. Well, that is the end of another chapter.

A few things.

First, Just so you all know I do on occasion respond to reviews with private messages. I am unsure that everyone knows this or checks them, but thought I might mention it here in case somebody had messages waiting for them that they hadn't seen.

Second, I am noticing that while I am getting a lot more views per day as I work more to get chapters out quicker, I am getting fewer reviews per chapter. I am still trying to decide if that is a result of over saturation effecting peoples willingness to respond, or if it is a sign that with my quantity going up, my quality is going down. So my intention is to shoot for a chapter a week of around five thousand words or more to be published for the foreseeable future. Aiming for Sundays, but we'll see what happens.

Lastly, AnFan-n-More left a review a bit back that asked a question I feel I should address. It will be covered in more detail in the story, but I thought I should post here my response for anybody that is curious. The question is as follows:

Ok, given your description of Dumbledore's character here in this authors note, does that mean that a phoenix is not a pure light creature indicating purity and good in those they associate with, or is Fawkes going to be more tied to the castle Hogwarts, thus now that Harry is acknowledged as half owner (he is right?) is more likely to hang around him now than Dumbledore? Or is Fawkes just an animal who hates evil?

My answer to them via private message was this:

I always thought it was interesting that people assumed that because a phoenix was a pure light creature that associated with good people that this also meant that it was somehow also a psychic that could delve into the brains of the people around it to find out what kind of person they were. I also always felt it was a mistake that people assumed that Fawkes was his familiar, since I don't believe that Dumbledore ever makes that claim. Dumbledore puts up an astonishingly good front, is genuinely opposed to the more obviously and completely evil forces that threaten the wizarding world, and is well respected by the wizarding community at large to a degree that it is obvious even to a bird. If you remove the psychic hotline from the equation, why wouldn't Fawkes continue to hang out with Dumbledore even after the chess master had gotten older, jaded, and more selfish than was appropriate? It isn't like a bird is going to care about a bank statement.

In any case, food for thought. See you in a week!


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Experiments in flesh, and flipping the fop.

Getting Alice registered for Hogwarts as a second year was a less than pleasant experience. She had gone into the ministry near the end of July and easily managed to pass the first year tests, though admittedly her scores on practical wand work were nothing special and her potions practical barely scraped a passing grade. There was some kind of problem however. Her requests were continually lost or somehow denied for reasons that didn't actually apply to her. Finally, a week after a very pleasant and highly exclusive birthday party for Harry, they brought the problem to Sirius and Amelia. After everyone got comfortable and the Bones elves supplied some iced tea, Harry responded to the questioning gaze from the two adults.

"Remember how I wanted to go back to Hogwarts this year with Alice?" Sirius nods and Amelia gets a scowl, as though she knows where this is going. "Well, they are pleased as punch to have me back, but even though we are willing to pay for six years in advance and she has already passed the ministry tests for first year, they won't even let her onto the grounds. Something is always wrong with her applications we send in,or we send a request for information and they send back that they have no record of her application. It's getting infuriating and I don't know what to do. I really want to go back, I would like to see my friends there and stuff, but if she can't get in then we are going to have to apply somewhere else. What other magic schools are there, I don't even know?"

Amelia sighs. "Harry, I am going to guess that you sent the first application in about a week ago?"

Nodding, Harry motions with his hand for her to go on.

"The next morning would have likely been the day that Dumbledore came in and requested all information we had on her. Because she is technically an adult and is applying to go to a school full of children, he has that right. I am guessing that he either doesn't want her there for something he found in the files, or he wants to somehow split the two of you up."

Alice rolls her eyes. "Harry, the self proclaimed "leader of the light" doesn't even comprehend what a soul bond is. Are you sure we have to go there?"

Harry thinks about it for a few moments, but looks up when Sirius reaches over and ruffles his hair. "Pup, are you absolutely sure you want to go back there? Don't get me wrong, my Hogwarts years were some of the best of my life, though given the last ten years that might not be saying much. The fact is though, the mind shields I have been working with you on are coming along, but you are not going to keep the old bugger out if he really wants under your skin. Your Occlumency just isn't strong enough yet. Hell, Alice's isn't strong enough. Though I'll admit only an extreme masochist would have any chance to stay in there long enough to learn anything in her case."

Alice chooses to respond to this. "While I am very much in favor of looking into alternate education Mr. Black, I am doubting that this shall present any issues. I have devised a plan to deal with the perverse peeping practices of the headmaster."

Amelia is now worried. The last time Alice had a plan to deal with somebody that bothered her, he ended up dead with an ax in his chest. "Hows that?"

Reaching to her collar, she pulls it aside and the adults see a scar upon her skin that has obviously been discolored by black ink when it was still raw. The most basic of tattoos. It is sitting just over her collarbone in the shape of an eye surrounded by the odd little symbols that wrap around it, very small and faint. Had it not been pointed out it is doubtful the two adults would have ever even noticed it, sitting under her hair as it is. To their surprise Harry does the same, showing a nearly identical mark on his own body. Amelia gets it first. "You carved runes onto your body? For Merlin's sake, what for? What do they do?"

Alice cocks her head to one side. "Which time? This by no means is the first time I have employed such measures."

Amelia groans. "We can start with this set here." She says, pointing at Alice's collarbone.

Alice nods. "This does two things. First if anyone attempts to lock eyes with either of us and use magic based on that, it can if it is active instantly respond by blinding us, covering our eyes in a magically resistant film until the attempt has past. While inconvenient, it does the job of seeing to it that they cannot glean any illicit intelligence against our will, and as soon as we avert our eyes our vision will return. If I am being honest, the hard part of that function was the one second peak through time that is required to stop an intrusion before it occurs. Otherwise, the concept would have been pointless. The default state for this rune set is to be activated, it takes an act of will to shut it down momentarily. Think of it as built in wards against such things."

Amelia looks like she is already trying to decide if this should be mandatory for her Aurors, or voluntary. That Alice would come up with something like this doesn't shock her at all. To say that Alice takes a practical view towards the arts of magic with which she is intimately familiar isn't doing it justice.

Sirius takes the moment that Amelia is running these thoughts through her head. "What is the other thing?"

Alice shrugs. "Possibly nothing. It is an experiment, more or less. I don't imagine it will be a dangerous one though, I shouldn't worry."

By the looks on their faces, they are worrying. Amelia however is both worried and concerned about the legality of what she is seeing. "Okay, but if it works, what are you expecting to happen?"

Alice looks briefly at the ceiling, as though she is collecting her thoughts. "As eyes are the window to the soul, I have added a secondary set of runes to this. It splices together our magical cores in a similar way to which our souls already are. Theoretically it should offer us an increased resistance to magical fatigue and hostile magic as well as a shared magical pool from which to draw. These effects though, interesting as they are, merely qualify as side effects to what the actual goal is."

Sirius waits a few seconds, then blurts out. "What, what is the goal then?"

Alice gives a slight smile, and Sirius realizes that pause was there only to cause him irritation. "The actual goal is to enable us to share the more esoteric skills we possess. Each of us has a highly unusual magical talent that we would like the other to also acquire, since we are by necessity going to be together for the rest of our lives. Because magical talents are hereditary, a way has never been found to obtain one any other way. But because our souls are already knitted together, the cores that power our magic can meld to the same wavelengths and enable potentially all kinds of interesting things. In theory. I don't think it is possible for it to be lethal, though there is a miniscule probability that one or both of us could be reduced to a squib due to this, losing our magic entirely. I speculate that this is highly unlikely, however."

Sirius and Amelia both start to pale at the implication, though it is Amelia that finds her voice first.

"Can you stop it? Is it already done? Did it work? How long ago did you do this and what were you thinking?!"

Harry laughs. "No, we can't. The cores are already gluing together, tearing them apart now would just damage them and force them to grow back together again. And no, it isn't quite done yet. To make it easier on our bodies and core she designed this to happen slowly. So no, we don't know if it worked yet. We did it on my birthday after everyone left, unless something goes wrong it should be done by the end of August. It was part of my present. This and the other one."

Sirius practically yells. "What other one!?"

Harry is all but giggling and even Alice is looking more than a little amused by this point.

"The one that makes me an honorary reptile, of course. What else?"

Amelia is holding her hands over her face and Sirius is standing up and looking fit to be tied. "Honorary what? Reptile? What?"

Harry can't even answer, he is laughing so hard at this point. Alice has to pick up the slack for him as she turns over her left arm to showcase the small overhead depiction of a turtle who's shell is covered in runes. Harry shows his as he is trying to catch his breath from laughing so hard, though his is obviously far newer. "Merely this, Sirius, and you needn't be concerned about this one. I have been using this set for longer than you have been alive. It functions exceptionally well."

Amelia is now looking like she is getting concerned about Sirius, and Sirius is now standing, basically looming over Alice. "What. Does. It. Do."

Alice sighs. "It enables improved aquatic speed and dexterity, as well as enhancing vision and hearing under such circumstances. Additionally, it allows a person to hold their breath roughly a hundred times as long as normal. For myself it allows a little more than an hour and a half at rest. Perhaps as little as forty five minutes with strenuous activity. I needed it in the mirror, not all dangers were terrestrial in nature. I offered it to Harry because I knew it worked well and he was complaining about a pair of lunatic redheads in his dormitory that are fond of something called a dung bomb. Moreover, as you at the same age as Harry is currently were intent on learning how to turn yourself into an illegal canine I fail utterly to see how you can possibly expect us to take your concern with the weight you seem to think it should carry."

At this Amelia breaks into laughter. "She's got you there Sirius. Animagus training without a trainer during Hogwarts years so you can rampage around with a werewolf on the full moon isn't exactly a ringing endorsement when it comes to being safe and sane."

Sirius just looks between the two of them while Harry breaks out into laughter again. "Oh, wow. That is too funny. I promise, we will keep you updated in the magic stitching thing. But lets get back to the point here. How are we going to get Alice in there?"

Amelia frowns. "I am not sure. As long as he is Headmaster he does have the final say over new students and though it isn't pleasant to think about, the old goat can make a good case against her between her actual age and her being recently involved, however incidentally, in a murder trial."

Sirius just grins. "Actually, if you really want to go there, getting him to allow her to enroll is pretty easy. Just let them know that you thank them for their time but you have decided to continue your education at... lets say Durmstrang. That should get the old goat's attention. It's blatantly obvious he has more than a healthy interest in you. I think he'd spend the year walking on his hands while wearing a leaky diaper if that was the only way to get you back there. Besides, if he really pushes you too hard you can make his life as headmaster unbelievably difficult."

The other three all look at him expectantly. He doesn't answer the unspoken question immediately, and after a few seconds Alice offers the slightest of grins. "Your godfather is correct, Harry. I hadn't considered all the implications. The Headmaster may not realize it but crossing you is going to be a mistake this year." At Harry's look of confusion, she turns to face him fully. "You are both Lord Gryffindor and Lord Slytherin. The Headmaster will have some power that it will be difficult to take away from him without causing more trouble than it is likely worth. But as the owner of the castle, the control of the ward scheme will default to you should you ever decide to take them. The amount of chaos that you can inflict on the man is nearly unquantifiable."

Sirius just nods. "And don't forget that you have a right to the owners suites, Harry. Two of them, actually. No more dealing with dung bombs for you unless you want to. Its sad, really. Pranking for you will be so easy it almost won't even be fun. Almost."

Harry is smiling at this point. "Now if I can just get rid of Snape, this would be shaping up to be a good year."

Sirius rolls his eyes and turns to Amelia. "You people dropped me in Azkaban for ten years and you have a marked Death Eater working at a school? Are you insane? What does greasy git teach, how to not wash your hair?"

Harry chuckles a bit. "Potions, and he hates me. I really don't know why, he's hated me since I walked into the castle for the first time."

Sirius gets a rather somber look. "I expect, Harry, that it isn't really you he hates so much as your father, and the bitter fool can't tell the difference between the two of you. They were not the best of friends. In fact, he probably hates me at least as much."

Alice looks curiously at Amelia. "I assume that the ministry has done research into this mark that the Death Eaters carry. Might I know what it is?"

Collecting her thoughts, Amelia nods. "As long as you don't plan to put one on yourself or anyone else, sure." At Alice's assent, Amelia continues. "At it's core, it is a protean charm that has been tied into the magical core of whoever it is on. It also has ties into their soul and their nerves, though I'll admit up front that I don't know how all that works. It allows long distance communication in the form of sending sensation up to and including debilitating pain to the bearers of it, and they function to tie the magical essence of the people wearing them to their master. To what degree, we are unsure. All we know for certain is that self inflicted trauma on the soul is required to place the charm. While there are legitimate ways to do this for research purposes, by far the easiest and according to the veritaserum confessions we got during the last war, the exclusive way that you-know-who preferred was to have his minions commit cold blooded murder, generally on strangers and usually on muggles who had no idea what was going on or how to defend against the assault."

Alice is incensed. "Why is this man teaching at a school?" She turns to Harry. "This man cannot stay if we are to be going to this school. I cannot, will not allow it." She addresses Bones directly. "I shall require copies of any and all documentation concerning this mark. As soon as you can manage."

With a curious look of her own, Amelia nods. "Some of that is in the department of mysteries, but I will get you what is commonly available in my department. What are you intending to do?"

"With enough information about the mark I suspect I shall be able to modify the wards at the castle to allow neither this man nor any other self styled Eater of Death entrance upon the grounds. Given the many different specific traits that seem to be entailed in the disgusting thing, keying such an alteration to effect only them should be relatively easy to accomplish. In truth, I am amazed it hasn't already been done."

Amelia and Sirius look thoughtful, while Harry looks confused. "How would you do that?"

Alice puts on her instructors tone, a voice that Harry has become used to over the summer. "Wards essentially do one of two things, Harry. Identify specific objects, creatures, intents, or actions and either include only them as allowed or exclude them as banned. In a public place such as the ministry or a school, it is impractical to have an inclusive ward scheme such as one you would place over a private residence, as there are too many potentially innocent and perfectly proper people who could find themselves popping by. Therefore I can speculate that this ward scheme is instead exclusive, and as such it bans a list of things, creatures, or circumstances from the grounds. Adding this vile mark to the banned lists will be simplicity itself once I have access to the wards and enough information about the mark to insure that nothing I don't intend to effect will get swept up in the change."

Sirius barks out a laugh. "And since technically Harry owns the land and controls the wards, the only way they could fight it is through the Wizengamot. With Albus no longer running it and desperate for political capitol to save his own ass there's no chance he will use any of it to save a Death Eater. I like it. Harry, she's a keeper."

Harry smiles and takes her hand. "I know, Sirius.

HaA

Two days later Alice's Hogwarts letter arrives along with a short note of apology from the deputy headmistress, who claims that she was not sure what all happened but that she was handed a pile of paperwork that morning and told to send out the letter as soon as possible.

At the breakfast table after reading her letter of acceptance and the required materials, she looks across the breakfast nook table. "Harry, who is Gilderoy Lockhart? He apparently wrote all the books we require for our Defense against the Dark Arts class this year. All seven of them. Odd enough that we would have so many, but to have the lot of them penned by the same author stretches credulity far past the point of snapping."

Harry thinks for a minute. The name sounds familiar, but it eludes him. "Not sure. I think I have heard the name before, but aside from that I couldn't say. It does seem weird to need so many books though, I only needed one last year. Maybe the new defense teacher is doing a friend a favor by adding his works to the curriculum?"

Alice considers. "Maybe he is doing himself a favor. I think we should bring along last years text as well. Something about this smells decidedly fishy, and I suspect when I get to the bottom of it I shall not like what I find."

Harry goes back to his bacon and eggs. "Just don't murder anybody unless they really deserve it, okay? Did you want to see if Susan would like to meet us in the alley to get the new book list sorted? We'll need to get you a new set of clothes for school as well. Hey, I just thought of something. How are you going to wear your skull pack with a school robe?"

Alice waves his concern away as she scribbles down a note for Susan and attaches the note to Hedwig. "Quickly, Hedwig if you please. Take this to Susan Bones and wait for a reply. We shall save some bacon for your return." She then turns back to Harry. "Worry not, the skull is essentially connected with a belt loop. I'll have need of a belt, but can wear it under robes on my side quite easily. In fact, the only reason I wear it where I do is to take advantage of fools who, upon managing to put me in a bad position, are silly enough to tell me to put my hands behind my back. Drawing from it would be decidedly easier were it sitting over a hip pocket."

After spending some time getting ready to face the day and cleaning up the kitchenette, the two get the reply from Susan that she would love to meet them at the Leaky Cauldron for lunch with her aunt Amelia and Sirius, but that she had already purchased her books and wanted to avoid the bookstore today anyway due to the signing.

"Ten Galleons says that the person signing is this Gilderoy bloke."

Alice raises once again her perfect eyebrow, and with a quirk of her lips responds. "As if I would be so foolish. Though were I in a mood to wager I would add that I have a suspicion that the man signing the books may be our new teacher, and one fairly desperate for coin as near as can be seen from this." She waves the sheet of parchment that contains the book list.

Harry makes a sound that is half sigh, half chuckle. "Are we going crazy with the books this time, or can I just bring along an expanded satchel?"

Alice begins the trip towards the floo in the basement. "I think that would be sufficient. We should be going though if we wish to get all of our shopping done before noon."

With a nod, Harry follows after grabbing the satchel off the shelf.

HaA

Seeing the line at the bookstore, they decide to hit the clothier first. While it is somewhat busy, it is still a fairly quick stop. The two of them each handle their needs for school clothes and are poking around for some weekend clothes and the accessory bins when they hear a happy cry from the door. "Harry! How have you been, I haven't heard from you all summer!" Looking up, Harry can see Hermione Granger, his friend and without a doubt one of the smartest witches he knows, in all her bushy brown haired glory.

"Hey, Hermione. Sorry about that. Things have been pretty busy for me this summer." Stepping forward he wraps her in a hug, then steps back as they grin at each other.

"Oh, I can imagine. Running off to get married and then nearly getting yourself killed in the ministry. Rumor has it you are a lord now too. Leave you alone for a bit and you collect all the trouble there is to be had." Were it not for the huge grin that stretches across her face, and the tone that is hiding laughter, the words could be taken harshly. When he feels a hand on his shoulder, he doesn't need to look to see who it is. He can feel it.

"Hermione Granger, my wife Alice Liddell Potter. Alice, Hermione. I am not giving up either of you, so being best friends is you only choice."

Both girls look at him as though just now realizing that he was likely dropped on his head multiple times as a child.

Alice bats him once on the pack of his head with her fingers. Harry grins.

"Please ignore him, Hermione. I am trying to get him housebroken but he is defiant to the very end. It is a pleasure to meet you. Harry speaks of you fondly, and often."

Hermione looks pleased, but her eyes widen slightly. "I hope you don't think that I am angling for him. We are just friends. Best friends, but friends."

Alice rolls her eyes slightly. "You've naught to fear from I. Between the vow taken and the soul bond we live with, we can never truly be rid of each other, not would we wish to be. Even when he does speak like an idiot."

Harry laughs again as he walks off to pay the bill, pleased that they seem to be getting along.

As the three walk towards Flourish and Blotts, they can see that while there is a line, there is also people who ignore it and walk right into the store. "Hey, the line must be just for getting books signed. We can skip that rubbish. I just want to get the stupid books and get out before I am noticed." Alice and Hermione share a look. While they both understand where Harry is coming from, they also think it isn't likely that he is going to make it out of this without hearing his name get yelled.

Entering the store reveals a veritable zoo of crowded people with standing room only around a table that has been set up for the author. The author himself is a golden haired and very handsome man who is happily talking about various exploits that he has written about in his new book, the autobiography, "Magical Me." Harry slips by the table and offers a wave to the mother of his friend, Ron Weasley, as she stands in line to get a pile of books signed. Unfortunately, this gets him found out as the plump redheaded woman smiles and immediately all but shrieks. "Harry, where have you been? Professor Dumbledore has looked everywhere for you, why if it wasn't for the Prophet we wouldn't even know that you were alive!"

Freezing in place as he turns to look at her, he can see the eyes of the entire shop swiveling towards him. The well dressed and blonde haired ponce that Harry was trying to sneak past reaches out and grabs him, hauling him behind the table. As Harry starts to struggle, the man, who's smile never wavers, speaks to him in a delighted whisper. "Do stop struggling, Harry, between the two of us we can nab the front page!" As he says this, the photographers that were covering the event start burning through film at an astounding rate, puffs of purple smoke being spewed out of their wizarding cameras. "Look what we have here, folks! It is Harry Potter! Now, when Harry came in here today he had no idea that he would be getting a copy of my entire published works... For free! But that is not all! No, this next bit of information I have been keeping a bit of a secGAAH!" Harry feels Gilderoy being bodily picked up behind him, and when he turns to see what is going on, he can see Alice.

Alice is normally just a bit under five feet tall. The ceiling in Flourish and Blotts, with their high bookshelves and rolling ladders to reach the top shelves, is at least a good twelve feet tall.

Alice is having to stoop a bit. In a voice that sounds as though it must have echoed off the bottom of a well to get that deep, she rumbles to Harry. "Are you well? Did this imbecile hurt you?"

As Harry looks he can see that while Alice is proportionately the same as she was before, it is difficult to see that when looking up so far. She gives the grabby fop a quick shake to advertise her displeasure, and Hermione is standing next to her looking shocked, but not scared.

"No, honey. I am fine. I think you can put him down now. I don't think he is going to assault a three time Lord again today."

On this statement, the cameras start up again, the photographers and reporters in the room having realized both what actually happened and how big a story this has turned out to be.

Alice rumbles out again. "He grabbed you Harry. I think I should break his legs. It isn't hard to fix, but it will ensure that he doesn't bother us again today."

Gilderoy cannot see the wink that she offers the crowd as he screams for mercy and assistance, aghast that the other people in the store are now tittering at him rather than bothering to help.

At this point there is a voice of authority from the front doors of the shop. "Back away, give us some space. Auror coming in, back off!" Alice is debating setting the fool down when she recognizes the voice, and more, can see the tall African from her vantage point. Once again in a voice that rumbles through the store, she calls out. "Shacklebolt. Your timing is impeccable. Lord Potter would like to press charges for assault against this fool." At which point she drops him at the Aurors feet, and reaches behind herself to pull out the purple bottle that Harry has seen before. Whilst she is becoming normal size again, Harry walks over to Shacklebolt.

"The man grabbed me and hauled me over to the table so he could have pictures taken with me. I believe it is so he could capitalize on my unfortunate fame without asking or offering me any form of compensation for my time. I want him charged with assault and theft. I can stop by the ministry later to fill out whatever forms you need. If that is alright."

Shacklebolt looks around. "Is there anybody here that will argue that this is what took place?"

The shop instantly becomes as quiet as a tomb.

"Very well Harry. Make sure you are in the office before tomorrow afternoon at the latest, I can only hold him for twenty four hours without a formal complaint, as technically nobody was hurt." He turns to Alice, who is now walking up to them, back to her more appropriate and huggable size. Giving her a single nod, he is cuffing Gilderoy as he speaks. "I like the restraint, Mrs Potter. It is new on you, but it looks good."

Gilderoy stops his sobbing long enough to screech out. "Restraint! You call that restraint?! I have been violated by that child, I demand that you take action against her!"

Shacklebolt laughs. "It is possible that you don't know about these two, Gilderoy. But just to clue you in, neither is afraid of a pensieve or truth serum, and if it goes to the Wizengamot and they see on the solicitors pensieve you assaulting a twelve year old lord, you can expect to spend the next five years in Azkaban. Besides, Including you, Harry Potter has been assaulted four times in the last two months, once by two people. Two of them are dead, one is spending the next thirty years in Azkaban for being in cahoots with a dead one, and one nearly lost her hand and was forced to pay a fine that amounted to more than I make in three years. Are you sure you wish to anger these two further?"

As it turned out, he did not.

After Gilderoy is led sobbing from the store and the line begins to disburse, Harry turns to his friend and wife, leading them behind a bookshelf while people are distracted by the Aurors escorting the fop out the door. "Nothing against the Weasleys, but lets get out of here before things get any more out of hand. We can secure a private room at the Leaky Cauldron and wait for Susan, Amelia and Sirius there."

Hermione looks more than a bit downtrodden at this. "Sorry Harry, I am staying with the Weasleys for the last couple of weeks of summer. My parents are off on a second honeymoon and have allowed me to stay with my friends instead of with relatives. Honestly, half the reason I agreed to it was that I thought you would be there as well, at least that was what I was told."

Harry laughs. "Who told you that? I never made any such claim. Alice and I have been staying in our own place for the last couple of weeks. Bought it in June and the renovations were recently completed."

Hermione looks fairly miserable. "Professor Dumbledore told me so when he made the offer in July. Without you there it has been all Ron bellyaching about chores and his lame quidditch team, Ginny asking endless questions about you to satisfy her creepy levels of hero worship, and Molly constantly on a hair trigger concerning you having, and I quote, 'Taken leave of your senses and married some scarlet woman floozy.' Personally I would rather be drug through a field full of salt and rusty razor blades by my toes, but unfortunately I don't have much choice but to go back."

Alice looks around to make sure they are not being overheard as the three start making there way towards the side exit. "If you are able to contact your parents Hermione, you would be more than welcome to finish your summer staying with Harry and I. Though I am unsure how fun it would truly be for you. We spend a lot of time studying as I am woefully behind in many areas of my magical education. In truth, the only saving grace for you would be that the wards on our... basement, I guess it could be called, are proof against the trace. You could if you wished practice your wand skills there without needing to be concerned about the ministry of magic getting wind of it."

Hermione looks like she has just been given notice that Christmas has been moved to tomorrow.

"That would be brilliant! Are you sure I would not be imposing?"

Harry has to laugh at that. "Of course not. You would be more than welcome. Do you remember Susan Bones, the Hufflepuff? She comes over every day at eight in the morning, along with my godfather who then tutors us until noon in various subjects. After that we pursue our own study or playtime until dinner, when we either eat at our place or the Bones residence when Amelia, Susan's aunt and guardian, gets home from work. If that sounds to you like a way to spend the last couple of weeks of summer, get your parents on the telephone and find out if they would be okay with it. Heck, I'd invite Ron if I thought there was any chance in hell his mum would go for it."

The voice from the other side of the stacks shocks them all for a moment. "Well, you're not wrong there, Harry." Then they see Ron coming around the shelf, looking more then a bit depressed. "So, not enough to be married, rich, and a lord, now you have to steal my house guests too is it?"

Harry nearly face palms. He knew that Ron would be in here, too. But things calm down when Ron offers a tight, somewhat pained grin. "No chance that I can make it for two weeks, mate. But I might be able to talk mum into a weekend trip if you have room for me. As long as you don't mind me telling her what you are up to, because the best angle I have for making the visit will be to help her get word to Dumbledore what is up. He's been pretty worried about you, Harry. He stops at the burrow every few days to see if you have been by."

Harry and Alice share a look.

"Can you give Alice and I a chance to talk that over Ron? We would love to have you, really. But Dumbledore has climbed right to the top of both of our shite lists this summer. I really don't want him knowing where we are if I can help it."

Ron seems a bit surprised about this, but nods. "It's your house, Harry. I guess if you don't want the Headmaster to know what happens in it that is your choice. I'll see what I can do to get cleared for next weekend. Have you been getting our letters? We have been trying to mail you all summer to invite you over and we never got a response. It was making mum furious, it was."

Harry snickers. "Yeah, I was going to handle that soon anyway, may as well be today. It isn't that we don't want to talk to you, Ron. It's that Dumbledore has had a mail redirect on me since I was a year old, and never removed it even when Gringotts raked him over the coals for it. Whenever you sent me a letter, it ended up on his desk. I am guessing he didn't tell you that."

As they exit the store and make their way back down the Alley, Ron waves a quick goodbye and circles back around to the front doors. Harry turns towards Hermione as they walk down the alley. "I think there is a phone booth on the street outside the Leaky Cauldron, would you like to make the call while Alice and I secure a private room for lunch? I don't think you are going to have a lot of time before Mrs Weasley shows up, and I know she means well but she is gonna fight against this, you know she is."

At her nod, they split up and meet again in the private room a few minutes later. Harry and Alice are sitting next to each other at the table, sharing a menu with their arms interlocked when Hermione walks in. "Well, the good news is that they are okay with me staying with you. The bad news is that they decided to cut their trip short due to an emergency at the clinic, something about a gas leak I guess. Anyway, they wanted to meet you and see where I would be staying. They got really interested when I explained that I could practice magic there. I think they have been worried I was spending all year at Hogwarts learning how to wave a stick around while wearing a top hat or something."

Harry and Alice both smile at this, though in the case of Alice the twitching of her lips could only be noticed by a trained professional. "No problem with that at all, we have like seven leftover guest rooms after you come over. I was thinking about it, and it might be easier if we ask Amelia and Serius to pick up your stuff from the Weasleys. True, you aren't actually staying with them, but you may as well be and it isn't like Mrs. Weasley is going to argue too much with the head of the DMLE stopping by to grab your stuff."

A voice from the opening doorway intrudes upon their conversation. "What did I just get volunteered for again?"

As Amelia, Susan, and Sirius walk in and introductions are made, Tom, the owner of the Leaky Cauldron, also comes in to take their orders. Once he has left, Harry explains the situation with Hermione and her parents. Amelia takes it from there.

"I am not really comfortable with this plan, Harry. Technically, Molly could and really should deny Hermione leaving without hearing from her parents directly. On the other hand, if she goes back with the Weasleys and can stick it out until tomorrow, Sirius and I can pick up her parents and then stop by the Weasleys, grab her and her stuff, then bring the whole lot of them over to your place in the morning. That sound good?"

With nods all around, Hermione wolfs down her food and then leaves with an escort in the form of Sirius to run down the Weasleys before they leave the alley and explain the new plan to them.

Then Amelia reaches into a satchel and pulls out a clipboard with a few pages of parchment stuck to it and a quill. Passing it to Harry, she answers his unspoken query. "If you are going to fill my holding cells with idiots, you are going to start doing your own paperwork. Go ahead and fill that out in triplicate, and I will file it when I get back to the office."

After a quick nod and a request that she deals with the mail redirect that is still lingering on him while he does this, the room goes mostly quiet for a few minutes, though it does take Bones a few different spells to finally remove it.

Deciding that they will go ahead and mail order the supplies they need rather than risking the alley again anytime soon, the two go back home and after the trials of the day decide that an afternoon nap would not be out of place.

Neither is awake when Harry starts moaning in pain, grasping at Alice for the comfort she provides. Therefore neither notices when his famous scar begins to weep red and black.

HaA

Authors Note:

Yeah, yeah. I know. I said next Sunday.

Between most of my responses being generally of the "Umm, I don't respond all the time but I promise I like it?" type and a friend of mine essentially telling me that I need to just keep writing and stop expecting the world to stroke my ego on demand, here is the next chapter.

As for the story.

Pretty sure most of you will have some idea what is going on here at the end. But if it doesn't make a lot of sense, worry not. It'll be covered in the next chapter.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Three's Company.

He awoke to the sound of his own name being repeated, louder and louder. But he was tired, and sore. So very sore. The headache just wouldn't go away, and unfortunately neither would the voice. Finally, his eyes open.

"Mr. Potter! Can you hear me!"

Looking around the room, the first thing he sees is that he is in the master bedroom of his home. The second thing is that the voice that awakened him belonged to Poppy Pomfrey, the Matron of Hogwarts' infirmary wing. The third is that she isn't the only person in the room, seemingly the whole crew is here, including Amelia, Sirius, Susan, and especially Alice.

Alice was looking concerned, but also decidedly... Proud? Scared? Worried? All of the above? "Pomfrey." He chokes out. "What happened?"

She looks at him, then casts a few more diagnostic spells. "I could ask you the same question, Mr. Potter. You were playing host to a rather vile infestation of some sort, hiding behind your scar tissue. Had its own little custom suite of magics keeping it all safe and cozy as well, why it must have been there since you were a baby. Since you-know-who." Her eyes narrow slightly as something occurs to her. "I can't for the life of me figure out why my scans never picked this up before, Mr. Potter. But as curse magic goes, this was both old and somehow soul based as well as quite powerful. I suspect you have had a little bit of you-know-who hidden about in there for almost your entire life."

Harry feels sick even thinking about it. "So what happened now?"

Pomfrey turns to Alice. "Frankly, Mr. Potter, I am unsure. I can determine what is happening now, but as the saying goes, I think I have missed the best of it. Your wife however has a theory that I have yet to disprove for all that it is rather unbelievable. Bringing into the discussion abilities heretofore undocumented and some kind of rune scheme body modification that I doubt even Babbling could sort the ins and outs of."

Recognizing the name of the professor of runes at Hogwarts, he turns to Alice for the explanation.

"Might I have some time alone with my husband?" She turns to face the group as she says this, and after one last bit of diagnostic magic to reassure herself of his status, Poppy gives a curt nod, and begins shooing people towards the door to the bedroom. Once they are alone, Alice's face crumbles into a deep sadness and regret.

"I am so sorry Harry, I didn't think. I have never had any problem with it and it just never occurred to me that there might be a price to pay."

To his shock, he can see that her eyes are beginning to well up in tears, and he reaches out to hold her hand. "What are you talking about? Getting rid of a bit of Voldemort is a good thing! I owe you a huge thanks for this."

She lowers her eyes. "While that is true, Harry, and I will never say otherwise, I realized what was likely occurring as Matron Pomfrey was working on you. The runes, they are functioning. The magic meld must be complete, or close to it. You begin to manifest the chaos, and this has brought low whatever life support was protecting the wretched little soul piece. Voldemort must have been intending to do something with that slice of his essence the evening he fell to your mother's talents, as it was already heavily bedecked with charms and the like to secure it in the vessel it was to be placed. When he died as he did, I believe that little bit of him just made for the nearest warmth in which it could find succor. No, I will never regret being party to your parasitic stowaway getting evicted, but Harry your chaos is manifesting out of control and has with zeal all but annihilated the protections your mother left you. I can see the thing, as I can see a faint glimmer of most magics. They used to lay on you like a shroud, now the poor thing hovers inches from your skin, writhing in pain as far from you as it can get and still exist. As soon as the protections that were stopping it had been excised, it immediately expelled the hateful presence of your leeching dark lord, but now the phantom is in the final death throws and I don't know how to bolster it. I can't save it. I am so sorry." The sorrow she is feeling, having been the hand that was responsible for the destruction of the last vestiges of Lily, at having even accidentally been party to destroying something so precious as the last dying wishes of a mother to her son is evidenced in the tears that now stream down her face.

Thinking for a moment, Harry comes to a decision. "Teach me."

"Teach you what?"

"Teach me to control this thing, before it succeeds in killing my mum. You know how, so there must be a way. Teach me."

Alice tried. She really did. But it was like trying to teach a blind man what blue was, or a deaf man to appreciate a the sound of a child's giggle. She felt sure that he would get it eventually, for all that he was sometimes a bit thick about certain things overall he was very intelligent. But it wouldn't be in time as the protection was fading fast, unable to access his core to revitalize itself without suffering further damage. After more than two hours, and when they had nearly given up, their efforts at meditation are interrupted. A cultured baritone sounds off behind her, and as she whips around to glare at it, she can see the wide smile of Cheshire fading away even as his words ring out in her ears.

"You cannot go home, it is true what they say. But living close by allows a visit, now and again."

Alice ponders, even as she mentally curses the irritating feline. While Cheshire can be unbelievably annoying at times, it was always worth listening as the damnable creature was rarely if ever wrong. Then her eyes go wide.

"Harry! I think I can save it, but I will have to use more runes on us. Do you trust me?"

Harry is still staring at the point where the smile vanished, though he gives his head a quick shake to clear it and turns to her. "Of course. Always."

Dashing across the room to collect her knives and inks, as well as a sketch pad, she begins working it out. Twenty minutes later, she is applying the blades to them both. A single cut, then an ink wash, then the same cut on herself. A sip of healing droughts to heal the cut. Repeat close to two hundred times for each of them. When she is done, there is a line wrapping around the eye they both share and then circled also around a small depiction of a faceted gem, filled with runes on every facet of her own design. As soon as she finalizes the set on both of them, she powers them.

The weakness sets in immediately. She finds herself falling forward onto the bed, the strength in her limbs fading fast as she tries to crawl next to Harry and they both feel the weight on their eyelids increase exponentially, dragging them closed.

HaA

Alice awakens. She has been changed into her pajamas and is laying next to Harry, her leg and arm intertwined with his. Not opening her eyes, she listens to the chatter going on in the room. A rather upset and sarcastic Sirius is the first she can make out clearly.

"I understand that Poppy, but that doesn't tell us what she did, it just tells us that she got happy with her damned knives again."

There is a snort. "I'll thank you not to take that tone with me, Black. You'll find that lord or not, you are never to old to be brought to heel by this Matron. Now moderate your volume lest you awaken them both."

There is a short silence, then a somewhat disgruntled Black apologizes. "Sorry Poppy. I am just worried. Do you know what she was trying to do?"

There is a rustle of hair on clothing, Alice guesses that she is shaking her head. "No, even if I was familiar with the runes she used I suspect I still wouldn't know what she was attempting. Rune schemes are not my area of expertise. But I can tell you what she accomplished. Whether that was what was intended, I couldn't say."

Amelia speaks up now. "Well, spill Poppy. You have ran your diagnostic, what happened?"

There is a slight throat clearing, and then Poppy drops into her more clinical tone she uses for describing symptoms.

"What was intended I couldn't begin to guess. What this new rune set did, at least in part, was set up an additional magical core that fills some kind of space between them. It reads to my tests as though it were a core stuck inside an enlargement charm on a small object somewhere outside of normal space, but accessible to both. I believe what caused them to fall unconscious was the immediate magical exhaustion as both of their bodies tried to fill this, this prosthetic magical core that they have between them. Unlike a normal core, this, well, magic bucket I suppose for lack of a better term, doesn't have the ability to generate magical power. It feeds off of the power generated by the two of them. Until it was satisfied, it quite greedily sipped from both of them, nearly draining completely their reserves in the process. Though it might be worth noting that it doesn't register as full now. Merely that it has reduced its demand to a small percentage of what the two generate as they recover. The puzzling, and I'll admit disconcerting thing about this is that according to my readings, there is something alive inside this bucket. Like a... a magical octopus of sorts, it reaches out on occasion with some kind of appendage to touch one or the other, and then retreats back to its core. I've done this job for longer than I even care to admit and I am not ashamed to say I have never seen the like."

Amelia is the next to speak out, her voice a curious mix of awe and worry. "How big is this bucket, I mean, how much can it hold? Neither of these two is magically weak and if it drained both of them that quickly it must be impressive."

A tone of agreement from Poppy. "Yes, that was my take on it as well. But that being said, the creature living in it may have something to do with it. If it was hungry and feeds off of magic, it could give a false perception as to the size. We will need to wait until it is full to know for sure."

Sirius sounds concerned. "Can we just kill it, whatever it is? Considering how this started, with Harry bleeding and expelling some piece of chuckles, I can't imagine whatever this thing is it is good to have around."

Amelia sounds more reserved. "Do we know what it is? I don't like the idea of planning to kill something without even knowing what we're killing."

"I'll want to talk to the Potters before I make any such plans. I am not getting any kind of hostile intent from my scans. Then again, a tapeworm doesn't have hostile intent either, so that is not conclusive. In any case, I don't think either of them is in any immediate danger, so let them sleep this off and if they wish further assistance, contact me again. I need to get back to Hogwarts before my absence is noted by the headmaster. Doctor patient confidentiality is fine and well, but the senile old blighter never knowing to ask the questions will serve me better. I have to go back in to Gringotts tomorrow to swear under truth serum that I was not party to Albus' foolishness before they will let me reopen my account for Merlin's sake, I don't need anything muddying the reading."

Poppy has the final word that Alice can hear, as the three leave the room and the door softly closes.

Deciding that this is acceptable for now, Alice rolls over to place her head on Harry's arm and her hand upon his chest, where she stays until sleep once again takes her.

HaA

By the next morning they are both feeling much better and surprisingly the scar he has worn on his brow for as long as he can remember has healed and faded to the finest of lines, becoming almost undetectable. They both awaken early, having been at rest for most of sixteen hours, but they are not quite early enough to beat the rest of the house to the kitchen. Sirius and Amelia are enjoying a light breakfast of thin Swedish style pancakes and fruit, while Susan seems to have finished eating and is idly leafing through one of the Lockhart volumes that are required for class this year. When Harry and Susan enter the dining area, Sirius turns to them. "I see you are feeling better. Hope you don't mind, I invited Amelia and Susan to stay the evening as we had to pick up your friend this morning anyway."

Harry fights to not roll his eyes. "They are always welcome, you know that. Susan has a dedicated room here and don't think for a second that I don't know you and Amelia share a room, wherever you are."

Alice adds in her bit to the conversation as she is dishing her breakfast up and pouring her milk. "I have been meaning to inquire, Amelia, how does one go about securing the services of a house elf? Experiencing how your servants perform has been quite refreshing, both literally and figuratively."

Amelia shrugs. "Every once in a while a family will have too many elves in their service due to their elves having bred, and one or more of the younger ones will follow a young witch or wizard who strikes out on their own. Other than that, the only methods are to be given one or what I would term the 'gray market'. Every once in a while one will show up on an auction block with other items from an estate. I call it gray because while technically due to the elvish tendency to bond to a family, selling one could be considered a form of slave trade, the reality is that this is one point where the letter and spirit of the law are not really in agreement."

Harry looks up from his pancakes. "How's that?"

Amelia looks bemused. "I have been to these sales, and been around house elves my whole life. You can't force an unattached elf to bond to a new family. They are too excited to do it to call it anything but a gift you are giving them." Her smile fades. "That doesn't mean they are all treated well though. Much like some people have no business raising children or dogs, some have no business having elves. But there is little that anyone can do, unfortunately. All the laws regarding house elves are at least hundreds of years old, and getting the pure bloods who run the Wizengamot to pass anything that gives them less power is doomed."

Sirius is looking absolutely gobsmacked. "Yeah, not caring so much about house elves at the moment. Harry, do you and Alice realize that you have some kind of parasite living in that extra core you whistled up with your runes?"

Alice smiles. "Indeed. I was quite pleased the procedure worked as well as it did."

When Sirius reddens and turns to Alice, finger raised, Harry breaks in. "Calm down Sirius. It isn't a parasite." He thinks about it. "Well, it might be a parasite technically, but I would think of it as more of a magical symbiotic organism. Like those ants that only live on special trees that they defend and stuff."

Sirius has a disbelieving expression. "You have ants in your head? Is this to feed your honorary reptile?"

Alice rolls her eyes and looks to Harry as if asking permission. At his smile, she begins.

"When Harry and I first met, I noted that he had a protection of sorts. A semi sentient and benevolent leftover from whatever it was that had delivered him whole from what the killing curse might have done. It is the last remains of his mother, and she has steadfastly protected him to the best of her ability since then. It is highly probable that she is directly responsible for his damage at the hands of the Dursleys not being far worse, as the essence left has the ability to effect healing on him." She sighs. They are not going to like this part, and probably blame her. "Things became problematic when our cores began to bind together. I said that we had abilities we wished to share. Harry is a parseltongue. My ability is less simply explained. Magical effects that are on me directly I can disrupt. Introduce chaos into, causing them to quickly fail. I know how to control this ability, having had many years with which to experiment with it. Harry does not. So, when he began to manifest, it first trounced the protections placed over the bit of Voldemort. Lily's protection immediately got rid of it once she was able, which caused the scar to burst and expel that which lurked behind. Sadly, she was not immune to the effect that was perturbing the parasite's protections. If we had allowed this bit of Lily to be destroyed, there would be no way to recover it as the essence of his mother would be lost forever. So, I created a home for her to stay that would sustain her, give her easy access to her son, and... well, maybe allow her to get to know me a little. I have stolen, however accidentally, the future of her child. The least I can do is bestow upon her an opportunity to despise me for it."

Nobody really knows how to respond to that, and the silence when she is done lasts a few minutes as people once again concentrate on their meal.

Finally, it is Susan who speaks up, looking at Alice and setting aside her book. "If your ability is to introduce chaos into magic that is within you, how do your rune tattoos work? They are as in you as it is possible to get, aren't they?" When the adults look to her as well, their eyes going wide, Harry decides to try and field this one. "The difference as it was explained to me, and I am sure she'll let me know if I get it wrong, is that a charm or potion has no physical structure designed to enforce order attached to it like the runes do. The chaos ability might make the runes a little less efficient while they are both running, but it can't undo the effect because the order is constantly being restored. That cover it?"

Alice seems pleased. "I won't say that I would have been incapable of saying it better, but your explanation was most effective. Thank you, Harry."

After another pause that borders on uncomfortable, Sirius sighs. "I always knew she was the smartest of us all, but I never expected her to be able to reach a decade past her own death like this." He turns to Alice. "As for you, I wouldn't worry too much. You are more like Lily than I think you will ever know. If what is left of her can truly get to know you, I think you'll be fine."

HaA

Sirius and Amelia head out to pick up the Grangers, and Susan to the Abbot residence to assist Hannah with some kind of luncheon they are throwing that afternoon. Immediately upon her flooing out, there is a popping sound from the kitchen.

Not knowing what to expect, the couple creep slowly through the doorway only to see the most bedraggled house elf they have ever come across hopping off the kitchen counter and looking up at them. "Excuse Dobby, Mr. and Mrs. Would this be the home of the great Harry Potter?"

Harry and Alice look at each other. After what might have been the emotional equivalent of rock, paper, scissors, Harry looks again at the nervous little green bug-eyed creature, whose long fingers are covered in bandages and hides his body beneath a filthy pillowcase. "Why do you want to know?"

The elf looks quizzically at Harry. They can see the small creatures eyes pan past Harry's forehead, and apparently not finding what it is expecting the creature looks down and seems somewhat distraught. "Dobby needs to find Harry Potter and warn him not to go back to Hogwarts this year. There will be a great evil there. Dobby needs to tell Harry Potter that it is dangerous so he does not go. Dobby thought that the great Harry Potter lived here, but you do not look like him. Do you know where he is?" Dobby again looks at Harry's forehead, as though staring at it will make the ugly lightning bolt shaped scar suddenly materialize back into existence rather than the nearly invisible line that he has now. Alice kneels in front of Dobby. "As we are all creatures of the world, with our own thoughts and dreams, do any of us truly know where we are ourselves, much less the whereabouts of others?" She holds her hand out to Dobby, who takes it rather uncertainly. Once her hands are wrapped around his, she says in a pleasant tone, but one with a slight edge. "If you enter this home again without permission from the owners, you will be assumed to be breaking and entering for nefarious purposes. When that happens, you will likely be put to death as a rogue magical creature by the ministry. If possible, I should rather like to avoid this eventuality."

As she reached the bit about breaking and entering, Dobby suddenly realized that his arms and hands were trapped. Unable to snap his fingers or wave his hands, which are the house elf equivalent of wands, he was trapped and unable to escape. The panic on his face becomes evident when he tries to jerk out of her grip and she holds him steadfast.

"Please leave our home, and respect our privacy. I'll not ask nicely again." With that, she releases his hands and the terrified elf wastes no time in snapping, disappearing almost instantly.

As she gets back to her feet, she can hear Harry behind her, looking at the booklet he keeps on him concerning the ward schemes. "Yeah, there isn't one to stop house elves. We need to talk to Grimknott today. Nothing against this Dobby character, but if he can find us than one less polite could too."

"What about his claims, Harry? This grave danger he wants to warn you of?"

Harry shrugs. "Ten to one he doesn't know what he was talking about or was referring to something we already know. Dumbledore or Snape or something. But even if he wasn't, I'm not gonna let Ron and 'Mione get run over by whatever it is, now am I?"

Alice rolls her eyes, but writes a short note to Sirius and Amelia to let them know something had come up and they needed to stop by the bank.

HaA

Author's Notes.

A short one, but another step towards the express.

Don't get me wrong, I like Dobby. He is great fun in the books and movies.

HE IS THE CREEPIEST STALKER EVER in the second book. Hannibal Lecter isn't as creepy as the Dobby portrayed in the second book. There is no probability that he would survive being that creepy around Alice. He would die sometime shortly after the "Mad Bludger" incident. I am not done with the little guy, but he needed a reason to back way the fuck off if he was gonna be part of this story as more than an obituary and a cautionary tale.

As for the way the Harry Crux went down, and then Harry's protection was saved, that has been planned since the outset. It makes sense to me that a protection like that would need to have some degree of sentience to function like it does, and I consider it an echo of Lily. A moon cast shadow. But since it is all he has left, he'll defend it to the death. And with what little bit of it that is left that still knows love, it will do the same for him.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Beaver's dad is kind of a jerk.

Hermione's parents stayed through the weekend. Somewhat surprisingly Ron was allowed to come over as well, though by Sunday he was less than thrilled about how he spent one of the last weekends in the summer break. While happy to spend time with his friends and a little thrilled to have been invited when Harry had gone so for out of his way to be scarce, he didn't really think that doing a "Magical dog and pony show for a couple of muggles" was how he wanted to spend the last of his summer, and declined the invitation to come out again the next weekend. Knowing that it wasn't likely his mother would turn him loose for the last weekend anyway, it wasn't a hard decision. Hermione was pretty upset at Ron's words until Harry pointed out that while Ron's tone could have been better when he said it, strictly speaking he wasn't wrong. They had spent a lot of time studying and demonstrating for her parents. Also, and this was said with a smirk, it was probably sticking in Ron's chops more than a little that after only a couple of months of intense training, even Alice was passing up the redhead's wand work, while Susan and Hermione left him in the dust. Being shown up by three women at the same time was probably taking its toll on the boy.

There was a tense moment on that Friday evening after Amelia had brought Ron over when the wards screamed out a warning that somebody unauthorized had attempted to use some form of magical travel to enter the grounds and had been bounced off to a Gringotts holding cell. But after finding the tracking charm on Ron's weekend bag and an hour later an owl from Gringotts asking if they wished to press charges against Molly Weasley for attempting a breach, tempers were soothed.

Amelia found the whole thing funny, as she had told Molly when she had picked up Hermione three days previously that attempting to appear at the house uninvited was a mistake.

After looking at Ron and waggling his eyebrows, Harry got stern looks from everybody. "Doing this for you Ron, not her. If I hear that she has been bad mouthing my wife again, I won't be so nice next time. I don't care what garbage the headmaster has been filling her head with, there is no call to be like that to somebody you have never met."

He doesn't get any arguments, but does send out the letter.

After seeing what they are actually studying, Dan and Emma Granger give the go ahead for Hermione to spend the last couple of weeks of summer with them as long as they would be able to come out and be a part of things on the weekend.

Harry smiles when he accepts that, and even Alice looks pleased.

But eventually the summer finally does wind down, and it is the night before the express leaves for Hogwarts that Harry finally has a breakthrough. Though that wasn't immediately clear to Alice when she walked into the bedroom.

Shutting the door behind her, she takes the time to start getting ready for bed. Shimmying out of her trademark dress with a sigh, as though she loved it she wouldn't be taking it with her. Robes until Christmas with practical muggle style clothes for the weekends and whenever she could get away with it, though her personal style was likely more than a bit out of date by the standards of most actual muggles. She had found herself having a fondness for clothing worn during the 1920's for some reason, though the garments she had tailored for herself tended to be made out of silk. Getting herself a drink of water from the bathroom after she puts on her pajamas, she finally gives up as she walks toward the bed. Seeing Harry already laying down with a book in his hand, a smirk on his face, and with purple skin and neon green hair that were so nauseatingly bright they glowed was not what she wanted to see for the rest of her life.

"Okay Harry." She says as she slides into bed. "I give up. Why are you disgusting?"

By way of answer, he hands her an odd bottle of the bedside table. Claiming to come from the greatest minds of Zonko's gag products, it was a potion that would turn the recipient into a random set of colors for four hours. No cure known, apparently, other than waiting it out.

She sets the bottle down on the table next to her side of the bed, as if to save him from himself.

"Need I ask why you are dosing yourself with some kind of joke potion?"

He offers her a smirk that might have seen a lesser man beaten. "I had to test it somehow, didn't I?"

Then the potion seems to fail. Not all at once, as it likely would had the time elapsed. But as though he is being slowly bleached back to normal. Fading back to normal skin tones in blotches for a few seconds before the whole thing seemed to collapse and he cocks his head to one side. Using as deep a voice as his twelve year old vocal chords can handle, and holding her hand upon which he places a kiss, he responds. "Does Mrs. Potter find this version of me more to her liking?"

Alice offers him one of her rare wide smiles. "Getting the hang of things it would seem. Just in time, as well."

With that she turn out the light over the bed and pulls him over so her was pressed against her back as she lay on her side, with one arm holding his hand to her chest. The two snuggle in tight, and manage to dream of each other, rather than the chaos that will undoubtedly ensue tomorrow.

HaA

Chaos was right. Harry, Hermione, Susan, Sirius, Amelia, Dan and Emma Granger, all arriving at the Platform nine and three quarters arrival point via portkey made for a pop that brought the eyes of everyone on the platform. Then came the inevitable calls to Harry, a few to Hermione and Susan, and the looks at Alice. While nobody knew who she was, most could instinctively tell by her expression and poise that she wasn't a first year. Giving out the requisite hugs and handshakes to the adults then scurrying onto the train so they could secure a compartment for themselves, the four found that they were in a perfect position to view the somewhat theatrical mad dash of the red headed army of Weasleys as they arrived on the platform mere minutes before the scheduled departure.

More than a few people opened the doors and looked in to see who was there, and nearly all said hello to the occupants. But only one entered.

Standing to give Ron a hand with his trunk, Harry greets his friend and fellow Gryffindor. "Hey Ron, How was your last week?"

The redheads wry grin was somewhat countered by a slight tightening in his eyes. "Harry, you have no idea how mad my mother is at you. The goblins didn't press any charges, but they also wouldn't release her until Monday. Something about the goblin in charge of arbitrating the dispute not being available on the weekends. When she finally got out, she called the headmaster on the floo and tore into him like you wouldn't believe. I guess the tracking charm she used was his idea, trying to find out where you lived. I spent the last week and a half doing a years worth of chores, since she couldn't find you to scream at you instead."

Harry winces. Ron has complained about the chores he has at the Weasley family home before. While they are no more tedious that what the Dursleys had him doing, and were generally nicer about it, there was no denying that the poor guy had likely been worked hard. According to Ron the Weasleys heavily supplemented their income with maintaining their own orchard and vegetable garden, both of which would likely have needed attention it being the last week in August. Under normal circumstances it probably wasn't so bad, as with three brothers and a sister all still living at home the work was spread pretty thin between them all. But by the way he was talking, Harry guesses that wasn't the case this year.

The group all decides that Ron being punished for his mum's poor choices is lame and cruel, and Ron finally sheds the last bits of his irritation as he basks in the solidarity they show him.

An hour into the trip when Ron Challenges Harry to a game of wizards chess, Alice turns to face him directly. This had been on her mind for awhile, and Ron was walking a fine line with her. Not that she would ever tell Harry who he could befriend or spend time with, but the answer to this question might allow her to decide whether she wanted to do so as well. So far, she hadn't been particularly impressed. "Ron, If I may inquire, what is it about this game that makes you enjoy it to the exclusion of other pastimes? Is it merely that you are able to beat others?"

Ron answers without really thinking as he sets up the board. Distracted as he is, unvarnished truth spills from his mouth. "I'd be lying if I said that wasn't part of it. Nice to be known as good at something. But really, it's because there isn't any randomness to it. The pieces move certain ways, no draw of a card or roll of the dice is going to take away an advantage you've earned, and thinking ahead actually matters." He shrugs. "I've always liked games like this. Most of the time, if you give me a game with set rules and no crazy amounts of random rubbish in it, I can find a way to beat you at it. Part of the reason I am hoping to get into quidditch. I think I could be a good player, but more to be a coach later. 'Bout the only career I can think of like it in the wizarding world."

Alice hides a grin. Yes. Yes, that was one of the many correct answers, and her personal favorite amongst the lot of potentials. The boy has many issues, but with them are also strengths. Deciding that her husband's friend is a diamond in the rough that may just require some polishing, she decides to give him a chance after all. "You know, Ron, If taking randomness out of things and being able to see clearly a few moves ahead is something that interests you, arithmancy may be a subject you would find interesting as that purely defines what arithmancy is. If you would like to look into it, I would be happy to tell you more."

Ron waves for Harry to make the first move, but is looking oddly at Alice as he does so. He gives her a nod. "Thanks, I'll think about it."

Hermione is so happy she is about to break into song. If Alice can get Ron interested in studying a subject a year before it is even available, then as far as Hermione is concerned she only has two more miracles to go to reach sainthood.

HaA

The train ride was pleasant enough, and they were not bothered as they made their way to the castle. As they entered into the great hall, however, Minerva McGonagall stopped them as she noticed Harry and Alice.

"Mr. Potter, Mrs. Potter. I was never able to get a follow up owl to you for some reason, but you should know that your request for married quarters was denied by the headmaster. Additionally, if you would follow me Mrs. Potter, we can sort you into your house directly after the first years are done." With that she motioned for Alice to follow her and Harry looked at his wife with a half grin. Sighing, she reached into her pocket for the Galleon and slapped it into his palm as he was making a cheering gesture with his other hand while humming "We are the Champions" as loud as he can manage. McGonagall turned around when she realizes that not only is she not being followed, the two are actually heading out the front doors. She can barely hear Alice mutter "Can't believe the old fool tried this. You would think he'd at least look up what a soul bond did if he didn't already know."

"Come along Mrs. Potter. I haven't the time to wait on you." She pales a bit at the response.

"You needn't. Harry and I will not be staying somewhere that will neither accommodate our status as a married couple nor his status as the owner of the castle and grounds. We can find ourselves out. Thank you for your concern."

This... This was not the response that McGonagall had expected. Harry to be surly and rail against the admitted injustice, that was a given. She was an unknown, but to see him smiling while idly playing with a coin as they both made their way towards the gates was not part of the plan that Albus had laid out for her, and she had only agreed to it because according to the plan, it would have been him that had to deal with it. "But Mr. Potter, where will you go? It is too late to transfer to any other school."

Harry laughs. "Well, that is true. I guess we will need to home school until next fall, but it isn't like Sirius has anything better to do and he already offered. Besides, in a month this won't be a school anymore anyway. Or if it is, it won't be one I would want to go to."

McGonagall begins to redden as Harry and Alice walk outside the doors and Harry pulls out a mirror that had been his gift from Sirius on his birthday. The two don't stop walking, and McGonagall is forced to follow along behind trying to get a word in edgewise as Harry begins to speak to it. "Sirius Black." A few moments later the older man's face appears in the mirror. "Already, pup? You can't have been on the grounds but an hour or less. What did the old buggering bastard do?"

McGonagall gasps at the cavalier way that the Headmaster is being dismissed.

"He denied us married quarters."

Sirius looks confused. "You know that doesn't matter Harry. He can't deny you the owners suites and he can't deny your wife having access to them."

"Yeah, but then Alice and I made a bet on this. She believed that he would know that the soul bond would require married quarters and wouldn't allow us to be separated. I wagered that he would know that, but would still figure he could hold it over our heads to get some kind of concession from me. Probably a trip to Gringotts with him. If she won, than I was supposed to be polite and try to win the day through kindness and politics this year unless somebody actually attacked us. If I won, I get to enact Operation: Would a rose, by any other name?"

Sirius smiles in a way that McGonagall remembers from his time as a student, and though she doesn't believe she really wants to know she decides it would be in her best interests to find out. "Mr. Potter, what on earth are you talking about?" She is ignored.

Through his building chuckles, Sirius checks a notepad in front of him. "I didn't think you'd really do it pup, but I ran the numbers anyway. Talked to Grimknott last week. The fences and stone walls will take a week to put up, the buildings a bit longer, and there will be an ongoing cost in the form of employees and upkeep. But you'll still make more money with this than you actually see from the school after the ministry fees and whatnot. You'll see a clear profit within two years even at the most cynical projection. Grimknott was so thrilled by the idea that I think he hurt himself laughing. Oh, and according to the ministry guidelines, the grounds can hold almost thirty thousand of the things, and that is before we start clearing the forest. We'll need to leave the Centaur areas alone, and it wouldn't be a good idea to go too deep into it anyway, it is forbidden for a reason. But that will still triple the viable area easily."

McGonagall isn't used to being ignored, and moreover is starting to get genuinely scared of whatever this is. "Thirty thousand what, Mr. Potter?" It is Alice who answers, however. Her face covered in her hand and her shoulders stooped in defeat.

"Hogs. These two infants think it would be hilariously funny to cover the grounds in hogs, pens for hogs, buildings for hogs to stay in during the winter, and a slaughterhouse on the road just a bit beyond the gate between here and Hogsmeade. Please, just give us the quarters before he actually does this. I really don't want to be known as being married to the bloke that brought the hogs to Hogwarts. Its not as though we will actually be using the married quarters anyway, we shall undoubtedly choose the owners suites. But he is stuck on the principle of the thing."

As the implications hit her, McGonagall staggers. Paling to the roots of her hair, she could pass for a ghost when she stammers out her answer. "Yes. Yes, I think that might be for the best. Please come back to the great hall when ye can, I need to be handling the first years just now."

HaA

Harry and Alice make their way slowly back to the great hall, and by the time he leaves her at the end of a mob of first years, the sorting for them is nearly done.

When McGonagall calls Alice forward, there is a hush in the room as she explains. "Alice Liddell Potter. While she is being sorted today, she is actually in her effective second year, having passed the ministry testing and the age requirement to start second. Also, it should be known that regardless of the house the is placed in, both the Potters will be sharing a private quarters this year. If you are lucky enough to have her in your house, please do her the courtesy of being available to assist her if needed."

As Alice sits on the stool and McGonagall places the hat on her head, she can hear a voice in her mind. "A Liddell? I haven't come across one of you in a long time. Always thought you must have died out, or moved abroad. Now what shall I do with you? Bright enough for Ravenclaw, fearless enough for Gryffindor, cunning enough for Slytherin, and no stranger to hard work, Hufflepuff would love you as well. What to do, wh..."

Alice sits. Waits for a few minutes, unperturbed. Eventually the voice starts again. "My dear Merlin, what on earth did you just do? Shunted right out I wa..."

Again Alice waits patiently. Though the staff and students are beginning to be concerned.

"Why are you doing this, Alice?" The hat seems hurt, having the same tone as a child that has hurt itself. Finally Alice responds.

"You are wasting my time, and it is unappreciated. Due to a magical vow I swore I can only be in the house where my husband is. Anything you say that is not declaring such is merely there to inflate your own ego and I have no use for it. Moreover, I am well aware that you already know all this. I saw the runes on the brim when I was sitting down, part of their function is to be aware of magical vows that might compromise students or staff. Stop fussing about and get on with it."

In the most whiny and sniveling tone that anyone in Hogwarts had ever heard, the hat pronounces "Gryffindor" as though it were a curse word.

HaA

After the meal, and some worthless exposition by the Headmaster, the two begin the process of finding the Owners quarters for Lord Gryffindor. Asking a few animated portraits did the trick, and they were soon walking the third floor corridor once again, though legitimately not nearly as far down it as they had been forced to do last year. Unlike many of the secured rooms in the castle, this one had not a portrait in front of it, but rather what looked to be a suit of armor standing against the wall. These were not unheard of in the castle, but when Harry walked up to it he notices that the symbol on the chest of the armor is in the form of a hand print, and in the center is a very short, very sharp protrusion. "Here we go." He mutters, wondering why everything in the wizarding world seems to revolve around blood in one way or another. Th slight nick he receives does hurt a bit, but the bleeding stops quickly. The armor suit shudders slightly, then the visor raises and a square of parchment slips out. On it there is a note.

Welcome back, my Lord.

None have breached the rooms defenses since your last visit, 328,612 days ago.

Please update the list of people allowed access.

(What follows is a short list of people that are no doubt long since dead, so Harry crosses them all out, than adds his own name and Alice's.)

Be advised that the room has not been kept up for many long years. Please indicate if you would like the Hogwarts elves to begin room maintenance and cleaning once again.

(Harry checks the appropriate box.)

Please place the note back from whence it came that I might update your preferences.

Harry does so, and when he does a oak and iron door appears next to the knight. Opening it for his wife, he follows her in. The place is dim, and covered in dust and the leavings of spiders. But all that is changing practically as they watch. Candles are being replaced and lit. Dust, dirt, and other such detritus is disappearing even as they watch. The windows and moth eaten curtains are being cleaned and replaced, respectively. Within five minutes, the room is a cozy living space with a small fireplace, a comfortable looking couch, a couple of chairs, and four doors. The first is large, and leads to a bedroom with a huge curtained bed and a walk in closet. Additionally, they find their own school trunks have already been delivered.

The second is a bathroom, and while it was last updated long before indoor plumbing was a thing, it would appear that Lord Gryffindor was ahead of his time. Using a combination of water summoning, heating, vanishing, and air freshening runes to handle the amenities it all appears antiquated, but functions as if modern. Alice gives them a look and claims that they all seem to be in good working order. She also gives the bathtub an interested inspection, as that looks as though it was supposed to accommodate at least five people and in rather strange positions. She begins to wonder just what kind of man Gryffindor really was.

The third is a small closet space that holds what must have been personal items, though because many of them were cloth, wood, and paper the ravages of a thousand years in an unheated and therefore damp room in a Scottish castle have taken their toll. They decide they will sort through it more thoroughly another time and open the fourth.

The fourth causes Alice to smile. Rather than a room, the door opens into what can only be called a customizable, and massive, ward stone. Runes on little clay bricks are inserted into it and each line apparently sets a condition, with the line opposite setting the reaction.

"Oh Harry. This is brilliant. First we lock the headmaster out of the rune scheme, that is easy. We can limit it to owners only. Then we can deal with a few other problems." She frowns slightly. "Like trolls."

Harry nods, as he has no idea what he is looking at he chooses an agreeable silence as his best course.

Then she starts having Harry move around the little bricks. Slowly, and with care. Trying to hide his irritation as this continues for over an hour. Finally, and with a grin that Harry would describe as sadistic if he was dumb enough to do so when he could be overheard, she has him place one last brick for her.

HaA

Oh Merlin, the pain! Severus Snape awakens from his post dinner snooze before he would have made his rounds looking for lost first years out after curfew with an unbelievable heat on his arm. Almost as if the Dark Lord were calling, but with no destination to travel to. The pain increasing by the second, the greasy haired potions master reaches for a vial of liquid painkiller he had devised and kept close. Quaffing it, unfortunately, did almost nothing. Staggering to his feet and grinding his teeth into powder, he runs towards the Headmasters office.

The Gargoyle in front of the stairs to the headmasters office sends word up to the headmaster that Severus is wishing entry, and within a minute is stepping out of the way as sweat pours down Snape's face. Pushing the door open, he sees the Headmaster sitting at his desk worrying over some problem or another. Pulling up his sleeve, the headmaster and Severus both see that the skin around his faded dark mark is reddening as the pain brings out blisters that pop, seemingly filled with bile and blood that runs down his arm. Finally unable to hold it back any longer, the man lets out a scream that is suddenly cut short as Dumbledore stuns the man, then spends some time considering what he is seeing while the flesh of Snape's arm continue to be punished, spreading slowly all around but oddly never hurting the mark itself.

In the Gryffindor dorm room Ron has turned in early, though if he was being honest it was mostly so that if his brothers had problems with the experimental potion based pranks they were feeding the first years he wouldn't be culpable. Having dropped a pillow on it, then a blanket, and finally looking as though he was considering the mattress, Neville Longbottom finally speaks up. "Ron, if your rat is really as hurt as he sounds, you should probably take him to the medical wing. Pomfrey can sort him out. We have an hour before curfew. I'll go with you if you like."

Nodding his thanks, the two start carrying the cage his father had placed strengthening charms on to Pomfrey.

The rat was in too much pain to really care by this point.

HaA

Authors note:

I am not sure who originally named the Granger parents Dan and Emma, but I like it and will happily steal it. (I want to say it was robst but whether it was or not, you should still check out his stuff. Amazing reads most of them, and he tends to actually finish his stories which is always nice.)

I considered doing a full chapter on the weekend they are all together, but honestly I got to thinking about it and those tend to be the chapters in other peoples stuff where I read for highlights and end up missing half of what was there because I skip so much. So, decided to move things along instead. Regret nothing.

I almost let the fact that he was in an animagus form allow Peter to get around this unscathed, but then I had to imagine that Ol' Voldie would have left such an obvious loophole open that people could hide their mark from him that way. While he is undeniably a sick bastard, he is generally thorough. So... Yeah. Peter is on the train to pain town. Population: The unfortunate.

As for the Hogs at Hogwarts thing? Hogwarts is a retarded name for a school. Just saying. I have no other justification other than I thought it was funny and Marauder worthy to think of, even if they didn't actually do it.

Oh, the name of the chapter.

In leave it to Beaver, a horrifyingly bad television show from so long ago that even I only ever saw in reruns, the main character's dad is named... Ward. I crack me up way more than I should or could possibly justify.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Of greasy gits, and foppish wits, and little rats alive'ee.

Long past time that the headmaster would have liked to have been abed, he was instead in the infirmary with Poppy trying to figure out what was wrong with Severus and the Weasley boy's pet rat. It was odd that they both seemed to have the problem at the same time, and both reacted to being conscious in the same way. Pain. Utterly relentless pain that seemed to circumnavigate any kind of relief that could be applied short of oblivion. It wasn't until over three hours had past, and in desperation Poppy considered to cast a spell on the sleeping rodent that would undue an animagus transformation that Albus' suspicions were confirmed.

When the rat became Peter Pettigrew, the true betrayer of the Potters, and was also obviously also bearing a dark mark, then guesswork went out the window. Something was targeting people who carried said mark, and targeting them with an intent to kill, or at the very least drive them insane with the agony they received from this punishment. It wasn't until three in the morning that he suspected that somebody had fiddled about with the ward scheme on the castle, and it wasn't because was able to verify it himself.

It was because he couldn't.

Thinking that he might tinker with the wards in an effort to drive out into the open whoever or whatever had done this, he made his way to his quarters, which also doubled as his office. The magnificent space had long ago been the quarters of Rowena Ravenclaw, but after a generation or two had been given by her family to the school faculty to be used as the Headmaster's personal space. From there he was able to access the ward scheme behind a heavily spelled and warded door. This clever little adjustable system of ceramic bricks and possibly the most powerful single ward stone he had ever come across in all his years.

It always interested him where the rest were, since warding a property always takes at least three, generally more. But he had never come across them. Now, he has a guess as to why. The door he would normally open to access the wards is gone. Gone as though it never existed, cutting him off completely from being able to undo whatever has been done to cause poor Severus this unholy torment.

As headmaster, he is still keyed into the wards however. So he is quite aware when people cross the ward line that are going to make his life more problematic than he might have liked.

Running back to the infirmary, he makes it there just after Amelia Bones, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Alastor Moody, and half a dozen other Aurors.

None of these people, incidentally, tend to be the type who would be on duty in the middle of the night. Which meant that either Amelia was expecting a problem tonight, or Poppy contacted her specifically. Either possibility is equally disturbing to Albus.

"Amelia, it is good that you are here. Apparently I have located Mr. Pettigrew for you. If you could take him before any of the students get wind of this, the school would be most appreciative."

One of the younger Aurors nudges Amelia and points at Snape. Too late, Albus realizes that his potion masters arm is uncovered, clearly displaying the blackening flesh around the dark mark he bears for his once master.

Amelia slips the headmaster a grin that could only be called feral. "Looks to me like a buy one get one free deal, Headmaster. Not to worry, we will return Snape to you unharmed assuming that he can answer a few questions under truth serum about that mark without incriminating himself further."

Albus is looking a bit like someone had just banished an entire bowl of his lemon drops somewhere that lemon drops ought not to be. "That won't be necessary Amelia. Severus has my utmost trust."

Without looking up, Amelia motions for Kingsley and Alastor to grab the greasy git. "Director, Headmaster."

Albus looks confused. "Director?"

Amelia finally turns to face him again directly. "Yes. Director. As in, Director of Magical Law Enforcement for the British magical community. It might have escaped your notice, but I can assure you that it did not escape mine that you have lost every single title you once held that had any potential to stop my Aurors and I doing to this man what should have been done a decade ago. I can only thank whatever karma I must have built up in a previous life that allowed me to experience Christmas twice in one night during September. Incidentally in respect for your deeds long past before you became whatever you are now, I want to be clear. The fact that you were, knowingly or not, harboring two Death Eaters one of which is currently a known and wanted murderer and the betrayer of the Potters, is going to find its way to the school board. I'll see to it. I would consider either spending the next few days looking for work or considering retirement, assuming the Goblins left you enough to make that viable. Hell, if I thought I could get away with it I would just lock you up right now. But we both know that in spite of all the crap you have pulled, you still have a little too much popularity with the masses."

Albus looks both shocked and dismayed. "Amelia, are you quite certain that is needed? Is there nothing I can do to prove to you my innocence in these matters?"

Amelia shrugs. "Albus, you have worked with and vouched for the man for too long to worm your way out of this. I can either tell the school board that you were harboring a Death Eater and using him to teach our children, or I can explain to them that your incompetence and senility allowed him to pull the wool over your eyes for ten years. Either one will see you out of here. If you like, I will let you make your case in front of the Wizengamot next week. Before you decide to go that route though you should know that because Death Eaters are considered enemies of the state, you will need to spend three days on flushing potions in a holding cell and then be dosed to the gills on truth serum before it happens." She flashes him a sly grin. "Knowing you as I do, I expect that this will probably be a little to much honesty for you to be willing to go along with."

Albus has no response to this. At some point just after last term ended, Harry had managed to get int to see his account manager at Gringotts. He is sure of this now. Undoubtedly the goblins have told a heavily biased story about what has happened the last ten years. Judging the actions without the full context being something that they do regularly.

In spite of his promises to the contrary, he can not save Severus. Attempting to do so would be foolhardy, would undoubtedly fail, and would burn up all the favors and political capitol he had left just to attempt. No, Severus was unfortunately doomed in all this, and Peter would hardly be worth saving even were he innocent, which he most assuredly is not. But has it become so desperate that he would need to enact his final defense against Snape? The fail safe that he conceived of during the last war, when the man, really a boy then, offered to be his spy? He would like to think not, for the sake of a highly skilled potion brewer, if not for his teaching abilities which were, admittedly, lackluster. There was also the outside chance that his hand could be detected in this. But it is unlikely. Between the wards and the dark mark, plus the regular regimen of self concocted and therefore questionable potions that he imbibes on a regular basis, even attempting to pin down a specific cause for his incapacitation would be all but impossible. Of course. It is for the greater good, after all. Sadly, the headmaster walks up to his office and opens a small drawer in a hidden cupboard, protected by charms the likes of which even the founders would have never seen through. Out of it he pulls a small glass ball full of what is currently red and black swirling smoke. A representation of his mental state, one that currently speaks loudly of pain.

A direct conduit to his mind.

With a sigh, the headmaster places the orb on his desk and pulls his wand.

"Obliviate!"

HaA

The next morning the two Potters make their way down to breakfast a bit earlier than most, morbid curiosity dragging them out of their sanctuary in an effort to find out what has happened to the Death Eater that Dumbledore allowed to teach. Curiously the bulk of the other Gryffindor students are also there, though in their case it is a combination of curiosity about where the Potters actually were and the desire to get their finalized schedules. This second reason has also managed to produce a larger than normal sampling from the other three houses as well, at least for the time of day. Within a half hour the room will be packed.

Oddly, Ron is actually up. While the stomach that walks like a man would never miss breakfast, it is unusual to see him up this early.

"Hello, Ron, ready for your first day?" The inquiry from Hermione, who is so excited she is all but squirming in her chair, seems to fall flat at his look. Harry is about to ask why he is giving Hermione a hard time when he answers.

"Not really. My pet rat Scabbers is having some kind of problem. He seemed to be in a lot of pain last night around eight and it wouldn't go away. I took him to see Pomfrey, but I am worried. He's a pretty old rat. My brother Percy had him for years before I got him, and the whole family has been wondering when he was going to pass on for awhile now. I need to go to the infirmary after I eat to check on him. Not looking forward to that. I expect I won't like what I hear when I get there."

Speaking softly, while flickering her eyes meaningfully at Harry, Alice can't help but ask. "If I might inquire, Ronald, how long has the rodent been in your family?"

Offering a slight grin, he answers. "You may as long as you don't call me Ronald. Only me mum gets to do that, and only because I can't stop her." Then he was thoughtful for a moment. "Well, we have had him as long as I can remember. Percy found him out in the cold on the edge of the property one November when I was really young, half dead and starved. Brought him in to nurse him back to health, and then kept him since the little guy was so well behaved. Honestly not sure when exactly, you'd have to ask him I reckon. But its been at least eight or nine years if I can't remember it at all. That's why I figure he's dying. When have you ever heard of a rat living that long? I expect he has been on borrowed time for a few years now."

Harry looks at Alice. "Yeah. Borrowed time." Turning back to Ron, he continues. "Let me know what you find out in the infirmary, please? I am curious what Poppy makes of it."

The conversation then devolves into speculation about the new year and getting to know the first years as well as reacquaint themselves with the schoolmates that were not quite important enough to sit with on the train, but still friends of a sort. As the heads of the four houses begin the process of passing out the schedules to the students, Dumbledore calls for everyone's attention"

"If I might have everyone listen up for a moment please?" As the room quiets down, he goes on. "Thank you. Due to some unforeseen complications in his personal life, Professor Snape will be unavailable for a time. We should be able to secure a temporary replacement potions professor within the week, and will announce at dinner the eve before potions will be resumed. Until then, you may use the time as you see fit, though I would recommend that any students in their fifth or seventh years spend the time reading ahead, as the ministry representatives that conduct the testing for those important years will be unimpressed with excuses. Thank you all."

During the man's speech, Harry had to avert his eyes twice as his vision clicked to black. That the old bastard could even attempt such a thing as passive Legilimency from ten yards away in a crowded hall while giving a speech was proof if such were needed of the power and skill of the old man.

That he would, well, as far as Harry was concerned that just proved that he wasn't to be trusted. As if any further proof was needed.

HaA

Finding out that the rat had been Pettigrew wasn't something that happens through the school. Ron is just told the animal is gone, and is left to draw his own conclusions. Harry and Alice find out what is going on later that day when they contact Sirius, who is smiling so savagely at the thought of Peter getting his old lodgings that Harry is concerned he may do something stupid, and makes it a point to write a quick note to Amelia.

Beyond that, however, things don't truly get interesting again until their first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. Apparently, Gilderoy Lockhart has some impressive lawyers, because he makes it into the school by the morning of the first day to teach. Standing in front of the class, his cocky grin fully in place, though his eyes narrow for the tiniest of moments as they pass over Alice and Harry. His obviously well tailored shirt, pants, and leather with lace shoes are an eye scorching lavender and gold mix.

"Hello class, it is I, Gilderoy Lockhart! I am here to be the mentor of you all and teach you all about how to survive encounters of the vilest sort. In this room you will undoubtedly be exposed to the most dangerous beasties that the land has to offer, but fear not! Nothing shall harm you whilst I am here." He takes a moment to really crank his smile up to the megawatt range, then pans it across the room paying special attention to the young ladies present, many of whom seem to be quite taken by the man.

The whole thing makes Alice a little queasy. She had run into people who behaved like this in the time between her family dying and becoming trapped in the mirror. To put it mildly, Lockhart was causing a large number of her personal alarms to go off.

"Now, as we will be spending the year together, I have decided to pass out a small quiz concerning the most important part of your education into protecting yourself from evil. Me! Please pass these out, that's a good girl, and while I normally won't allow it, if any of you should like to check your texts for the answers, that would be fine this time. We will spend a half hour doing this, and then I have something special for you."

Harry read the first few questions and slowly became more and more disgusted as he went.

Ron's whisper gives voice to his irritation. "Psst. Harry. All this tripe about his favorite color and crap, how is this supposed to stop a dark wizard?"

Alice reads the entire thing. Signs her name, and writes a small note at the bottom. Then she sets it aside and pulls a copy of "Numbers that may or may not exist for magics that could or could not" from her bag and begins to read.

Perhaps ten minutes into the quiz, Gilderoy decides to drop in on her desk. "Mrs. Potter, I see that you have decided to not bother with your quiz. A zero for the day I suppose. Sad, I had expected better from you." Oddly, the pronouncement doesn't seem to make him sad at all. Alice places a bookmark and sets her arithmancy supplement on the desk. "It is for your sake that I am choosing not to indulge your ego in this instance, Mr. Lockhart. I should think that you would have some consideration for my efforts."

Gilderoy looks confused.

"Whatever are you talking about, you silly girl? How could choosing to not do a class assignment possibly be of benefit to me?"

Alice meets his eyes, her stare piercing as Harry fondles his wand under the table, waiting for the fop to do something that would require a response.

"It appears that you have never bothered to learn what it is that makes a dark creature by ministerial law. Getting removed from this list has proven to be nigh impossible. But getting placed onto it is quite simple. There are two ways it can be done. The first is by a vote of the Wizengamot. A messy procedure, but one they will tackle with glee when the opportunity does arise. The second, as per the laws passed in fifteen seventeen, when the ministry was just getting started and Hogwarts had been going strong for five hundred years, is that any creature or person the specifics of which were part of the "Dark Arts" curriculum at Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry was to be considered "Dark" until proven otherwise by a full accounting of the Wizengamot. These laws are still on the books. By choosing to add yourself to the curriculum you are placing yourself on the level of a Werewolf or Veela. If that is your choice, of course I will gladly participate. Though if I am being honest, I frankly find your fancy frippery and foppishness hardly worth the effort."

In a panic, Gilderoy collects and burns the quizzes. Much to the annoyance of Hermione, who was reasonably certain she was going to get an 'Outstanding' on the quiz.

Once the quiz has been disposed of, Gilderoy manages to paste his smile back firmly on his face. "Due to some new information, I have decided that you will all get an 'A' for that one, no exceptions! And if we could now move on to our practical portion of the class." With that he walks toward the cage that has been sitting in the back of the room under a blanket. Placing it on a stool in front of the class, he turns back to the class. "Under this cover you will find a danger the likes of which I was reluctant to even bring into a school. But as the headmaster says, you are here to learn." With that he whips off the cover, causing the cage to wobble ominously on its perch and the denizens within to begin massing at the bars, making rude gestures and little biting motions. Dozens of tiny, winged, blue creatures.

Somebody from the back of the room snorts derisively. "Cornish Pixies?!"

"Freshly caught Cornish pixies, I'll have you know. At great personal risk to myself. Don't underestimate these. Dangerously cunning little blighters they are. So lets see what you make of them, shall we?" With that, there is instant chaos. Within seconds their professor has been stripped of his wand and flees into his office after tossing the order over his shoulder to "Nip these little guys back into their cage, would you?"

Alice and Harry grab Hermione and Ron, backing up towards the wall as they do so. Alice takes a live and let live stance until two of the pixies start hauling Neville Longbottom up to a chandelier by his ears. As the Slytherins that shared the class with them make their way out the doors, she reaches into her skull and pulls out the cards.

The playing cards. Fifty-two of them, plus a couple of Jokers. Each has an upper case "A" in a flowing script on the back, as well as the standard markings of a proper suit and value on the front. But around the edge there are runes. Runes for toughness, sharpness, force, velocity, the ability to return themselves to the pack they are kept in, and the ability to automatically target by mental command. They are not particularly powerful, as Alice's weapons go.

But they are ideally suited to this.

She begins by cutting in half the two that are attempting to hang Longbottom. His five foot fall does knock him to the floor, but given how quickly he gets up it is unlikely that he is hurt. Then she waits as the horde of twenty to thirty remaining all stare at her in shock and horror. To be fair, many of her class mates do the same.

For the next half an hour, any pixie that makes a move on a student finds itself in multiple pieces, while Hermione has taken to stunning them and placing them back into the cage when she can.

In the end, fully half of them are dead while the rest are unconscious in the cage.

Some might call her petty, but it must be said that it made Harry laugh himself near senseless when the two excused themselves from class and found Lockhart's wand out on the school lawn only for her to snap it in half as she mumbled something about disarming a known enemy of reason and good sense.

HaA

Authors Note.

I feel like I should apologize for the last chapter. I was really tired when I finished it, and a lot of really stupid errors managed to creep in. Obviously, I am not making any money with this and it is a lot of work. So I don't stress too much on the editing and just hope that you all will forgive me my transgresses. But the last one was bad enough that it actually caused me to give it another read through and post a somewhat less broken version after some modification. Apparently an update every other day won't be a thing, if it can do that to me.

As for why this update has taken five days and is as short as it is, well, I blame the Reapers. I mean, Commander Shepard needs my help and it isn't like the damn things are gonna defeat themselves if I don't assist. (Been playing through the Mass Effect Trilogy, in case you didn't get the reference. Need a bit of a break.) Will post again when I get around to finishing another one. I am thinking that we will get to Halloween in the next chapter though, so that will be something to look forward to.

As an aside (and no, I don't think I am going to include it in this story) does anybody else think it would be really cool, if kinda wacky, if somebody wrote a "Neville is cool" story where his claim to fame was that he carried around as a familiar an enormous potted devil's snare in a backpack Doctor Octopus style? It's ridiculous, but I think it would be fun as hell to explore as a concept. It keeps biting my brain, trying to infect me enough to add itself to the list of stories I want to write.

As for the title?

"Mare's eat oats, and doe's eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy."

If that didn't get you the tune to sing it to, consider yourself a lucky, untainted soul who won't have it stuck in your head for a week. As for the rest of you, I apologize.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Fall down go boom.

Amelia was rapidly becoming annoyed. Once they got Snape and Pettigrew off the Hogwarts grounds, they both visibly relaxed even in their sleep and the damage that was so obvious on their arms stopped spreading. Unfortunately, once back at the ministry they couldn't get any new information out of them. Oh, Pettigrew sang like a bird under the truth serum. But all he did was verify information that they already had from Sirius. Well, that and make some interesting claims about some illegal modifications that Arthur Weasley had apparently done to his car. Him being the director of the "Misuse of Muggle Artifacts" office too. A good man, but without some political clout in the form of some influential friends it was likely to go poorly for him. Merlin knows Dumbledore was in no position to vouch for the man as he had done in the past, and the likelihood that Arthur could afford to pay the fine was miniscule.

Snape, though. There was almost a minute after they had used a portkey to get back to the ministry and awoken him that this was shaping up to be good. He was lucid, pissed off at Albus something fierce, and willing to name names and spill details, obviously trying to angle for some kind of immunity. Then he stiffened, there was a look of horrific realization as though he had turned around to see a train bearing down on him. Then his face went slack. His arms flopped to his sides. He took stock for a few moments, and then with one eyebrow raised asked why he was in a cell, and what the hell had happened to his arm. After an hour long question and answer session it had become clear.

He'd been wiped of anything that had happened to him after his third year in Hogwarts. He was concerned about getting to class on time tomorrow as a student. He was, in a word, worthless. Both to himself and to Amelia's investigation of Dumbledore. As a man entering the first part of middle age as a wizard he was going to need to deal with at least completely redoing half of his childhood, and while wearing a permanent symbol as reviled in the magical world as the swastika was to muggles to boot. After shuffling him off to the Department of mysteries in the hopes of determining what had happened to him, she set up the manpower for the raid on the Weasley home. Unfortunate that it was required, but really. Arthur was the driving force behind half of those laws. If he can't be bothered to obey them how can he expect anybody else to?

Still, he was generally one of the more sane and compassionate of the ministry heads. But nobody that enforced laws can be above them. The roads that led down were horrifying, and well... She supposed that at least from her perspective it was better her Aurors got the lesson from Arthur doing a short year or two year stint in Azkaban then them ruining their own careers.

Losing him would hurt though, no two ways about that.

HaA

Albus cannot get access to the wards. He tried for half the night, and has been fighting with it again most of the day. He can sense everything that comes and goes that the wards pick up, so he knows he is still recognized as the Headmaster. But he can't change them. Can't control them.

The fact that he can't control them is horrifying to the old man. Nothing he can even imagine would get him closer to closing the school than losing control of the wards. But he can't. He can't even bring in the ministry, he is on shaky enough ground as it is. Whoever made the changes has effectively locked him out, and the extent of the changes is a mystery as well. So it must be somebody that has a firmer claim on the castle than he does. The only possible candidate is Harry Potter. Lord Potter, really. But even if it was assumed that he could access them, he is just starting his second year, and has had no prior exposure to magic. How in the world would he even know what to do?

The girl. It has to come back to this damn Alice tart that has her hooks into him. The other option, that Tom has managed to possess the boy, while possible is too horrific to contemplate yet. Perhaps it would be a good time to discuss with McGonagall where the two slept last night and find a copy of Alice's results for her ministerial exams. Albus hadn't bothered to look at them before.

They hadn't mattered until now.

HaA

The evening of the second night, as Harry and Alice are having their evening meal and joking with the other Gryffindors about the waste of space that is Gilderoy Lockhart, McGonagall approaches them. "Mr. Potter. The Headmaster wishes to speak with you after dinner this evening. The password to get into the office is "Candy Corn."

Harry nods, still smiling over something that the quidditch captain, Wood, had said. "Sure thing, Professor. Alice and I can go with you to see him as soon as we are done eating."

McGonagall frowns. "Mr. Potter, the Headmaster has made no claim to wish to speak with your wife. As for myself, I unfortunately have other obligations. I won't be joining you."

Harry and Alice exchange a look. After a moment, Harry responds. "Then I am afraid I won't be making it up to see him. Please offer him my apologies."

McGonagall really doesn't know how to respond to that. In all her years, under three different headmasters, she has never heard of a student being so contrary as to refuse to meet with one. "Mr. Potter, I am not certain that you understand. This is less of a request, and more of a requirement. Why would you not wish to meet with the man? I understand that there is some kind of misunderstanding regarding your mail, but he explained to me that you were living with non magical folk. That redirect was there for your own protection."

Harry laughs, and Alice speaks up now. Her voice pitched to carry across the great hall with a fury that is barely held in check. "Really. So, when Albus saw fit to lighten the Potter accounts of nearly half a million Galleons, was this also a security feature intended to keep him safe? When he chose to ignore and subdue the wills of Harry's parents, was this due to his overwhelming love for the toddler? When Harry spent ten years being abused by the family that dear Albus saw fit to drop him into, was he left there as a measure to ensure his well being?" Alice's eyes narrow down to slits, and she goes to talk again but stops when Harry shakes his head. "Professor McGonagall, we are trying really hard to see past your own guilt on that last one and you are not making it easy on us. Not trying to cause problems here, but we wouldn't trust the Headmaster to die if you took his head off. Much less treat me like a human being. Sad to say, thanks to the report we got from the goblins about you concerning the day that I was left at my aunt's house, you are not doing much better. We didn't bring it up before because I was really hoping that you weren't going to be wholly against me. That you might take your position as head of Gryffindor house seriously enough to do the right thing by us. But I guess that is not going to happen. I think Alice and I are going to have to request to be resorted into a new house for our own protection."

The Great Hall is so quiet that the sound of the Headmaster's chair creaking as he winces back, having once again been thwarted in his attempts at Legilimency, is audible to the entire room. As the students and teachers in the room look to him they can all see the blood draining from his face. McGonagall looks shocked. "You would wish to be resorted? The both of you?" At Harry's nod, she continues. "The provision exists to allow it, but not at the request of a student. It is something that can be evoked by the head of house if it is felt the sorting hat is in error. I am sorry to say, Mr. Potter, that I do not think the hat made an error. Even by your actions now, you display a bravery and desire to right a perceived wrong that marks your house for you quite keenly."

Alice is quickly reaching the limits of her patience with this. "Not allowing us to stay in a manner that gives us security would be a mistake, Professor. We shall have our way in this. The choice to you concerns whether you are gracious or brought about to the correct response on your knees. I'll not permit a third result."

McGonagall reddens in a rage of her own, and before Albus can respond to all this spits out her response. "Request denied. If you wish to run off and bring your swine I will turn them all into teacups and toss them into the lake, we will see which runs out faster. My magic, or your money."

Albus blinks. Swine? What are they talking about?

Alice stands, and Harry quickly follows suit when he realizes what is going on. As the two leave the great hall, Alice spares the headmaster a look that causes him to wince in response. The young woman hates him. Hates him in a way that Albus has only ever felt from political rivals and dark lords. Hates him enough to do things she might regret later, perhaps? He will have to redouble his efforts to get control of the wards. There is no other choice, he must have this control.

HaA

It starts at eleven o'clock. Albus awakens with a jarring half cry, panicked as the wards have sounded like a gong in his mind.

Someone has died. On his watch, in this castle. Someone has died.

He scrambles to put his clothes on, wrapping his robe quickly about himself when the gong sounds again, an all encompassing boom that only he can hear. Two deaths? So quickly? Someone must be in one of the dorms. He'll need to get the heads of house involved. Rushing to his floo, he call for McGonagall. As he does so, the gong sounds twice more in quick succession. By Merlin, what is happening in his school?!

In the time it takes him to contact all the heads of house and explain his suspicions, he feels twelve more deaths. At this rate the student body would be dead by the end of the night. They come at random. The jarring, overwhelming boom causing his teeth to rattle in his skull every time.

He calls the ministry on the floo after he is done with his heads of house. He doesn't have a choice. One of these dormitories must be a tomb by now, he has felt nearly fifty before he finally has Aurors on the way.

The booms continue to come crashing in, spaced out in random intervals for the next hour. But his heads and the Aurors are reporting that nothing as amiss. Nobody is dead. Nobody is even hurt. It doesn't make any sense. Somebody has control of the wards. But even if they wished to, they cannot make a death gong happen through the wards without a death, and the wards are limited in their range to the castle and it's grounds. They extend a bit past the walls, but not far. Not far enough for this by half. How is it being done? Who is doing it he thinks he may know. There is a note on her file that Alice had wished to challenge the ancient runes course and was apparently quite annoyed that this would not be possible until at least third year.

But how?

One thing is for certain. He needs sleep to look into this and he cannot get it here. He'll need to get a room at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade for the night. Get some sleep and be back early in the morning to sort this out. He can barely think with the constant shelling of his mind by these phantom gongs. Getting on the floo one last time to tell McGonagall, the deputy headmistress, where he would be, he leaves the grounds. When the sounds stop, he heaves a sigh of relief, and then puzzlement. He had almost considered that maybe it actually wasn't the wards, but some kind of rather tasteless prank. But leaving the proximity having ended it confirms all to Albus. Now for sleep. This can be sorted out tomorrow.

As Albus leaves the grounds, McGonagall wakes from her drowsing on the way to sleep to the sound of a death happening in Hogwarts.

Hours earlier as he moved around little ceramic bricks at Alice's direction, he can't help but ask. "So, dearest and devious one whom I love and wish never to get on the wrong side of, what will this do, exactly?"

Alice has a wry smirk on her lips. "It will inform the Headmaster if there are any deaths on school property. A rather clever rune set the founders had devised, making sure whoever was responsible for the school and thus the ward scheme would know if anybody became deceased under their care. A loud sound, similar to a huge bell or gong, is supposed to overwhelm them for a moment whenever it occurs, awakening them if required. Supposedly it is a highly unpleasant experience. Thankfully we can set the wards to inform only the recognized headmaster, rather than the owner."

Harry looks confused. "Maybe I should be made aware. If somebody dies on the grounds I could maybe stop it before it happened again."

Alice's wry smile becomes a more endearing one. "A noble thought, dearest husband. But you misunderstand. The ward in question no longer informs the Headmaster if anybody dies. It informs him if there are any deaths. Harry, insects can die. I would wager that thousands die here every day. We will let this run until they allow our resorting. I am finished playing nice with this manipulative old fool and his flock of flunkies, and since you won't let us leave this awful place they will need to be brought to heel. I have lived too long opposing with all I am oppression the likes of which could only come from within, and now that I have finally rid myself of it I'll not submit to some tin pot dictator of an old man on a power trip that gets his jollies lording his power over children. Leader of the light, indeed."

Harry smiles. "If my dearest would allow me to lead her to bed?"

Alice mirrors his smile, and hand in hand they walk to the bedroom.

HaA

McGonagall is as stubborn as they all knew she would be, but after a week of Albus leaving in the evenings and then her not getting any sleep, she is beaten. It is Sunday for dinner when she calls the two up to the front of the great hall, where the stool and hat wait for them. Her haggard countenance and bloodshot eyes are counterpoint to Albus' slight wince a couple of times a minute as the booms continue unabated.

Ron hasn't spoken to Harry since they made the announcement to be resorted. He hasn't been rude or avoided him, but it is more as if he isn't sure what to say. There is also some rumors going around the castle that his father is due to spend some time in prison for being unable to pay some kind of fine, which is likely factoring heavily into the young man's melancholy state.

As the two walk up a hush falls over the hall once again. The other three heads of house, the part goblin Filius Flitwick, charms teacher and head of Ravenclaw, looks as though he is expecting them to be coming his way. Pomona Sprout of Hufflepuff looks as if she would be fine either way, but perhaps a bit distressed that it is even needing to happen at all. But the look of utter glee on the face of the new head of Slytherin house and potions teacher, one Horace Slughorn, makes both of them feel soiled somehow. To say the man is creepy doesn't do it justice.

Harry sits on the stool first, whilst Alice stands at his side. The hat at first seems fairly confused.

"Lord Potter. I thought I had already sorted you over a year ago? Has there been some kind of problem?"

Harry shrugs. Then realizes how silly that was as the hat can't see it, and blushes. "Gryffindor isn't working out for Alice and I, unfortunately. We can't count on our head of house to act in our best interests. We felt that a move would be a good idea."

There is silence in his head for a few moments, though he can almost feel the hat shuffling about in his memories. "I see, Lord Potter. Yes, I can see your trouble. McGonagall has always followed Albus' lead, even before he became the headmaster. I suppose I could have seen this coming, given some of the things I have seen in the Headmasters office over the years. I suppose you are still adamantly against Slytherin house?"

Harry can't help but smile at the mental image of what would be the likely outcome of Alice having to spend even more time with certain Slytherins. "Yeah, I don't think Slytherin is a good idea if you like Slytherins."

The hat wobbles its pointed top in a rather disturbing parody of nodding.

"Then frankly, you could easily go to either Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, particularly given what I am seeing as a new interest in studying ahead. But if your wife has to follow you and I suspect she will insist on it, I am not sure Pomona's badgers are quite prepared for the likes of her. Guess it better be "RAVENCLAW!" The announcement being yelled allowed for the whole room to hear, and then repeated seconds after the hat touched Alice's head.

HaA

The introduction to the house happens in the Ravenclaw common room that evening. Harry and Alice cannot help but note that while everyone is scrupulously polite while Professor Flitwick is in the room, things degenerate quickly once he leaves into a dozen or more small cliques, and the humor in the conversations take on a tone that, while cerebral, is decidedly less than kind.

The two decide that they will be spending the bulk of their time in their own rooms, and avoid the Ravenclaw areas if they can. Though they do spend some time that evening sitting peacefully in front of the fire, reading their texts, and occasionally chatting with a seemingly friendless first year by the name of Luna Lovegood. She is reading a periodical of some sort and doing so upside down, which both Harry and Alice find odd. She is a tiny, waif like thing. Long blond hair and eyes so blue they seem to project an intelligent innocence from behind a clear bright smile.

"Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Potter. It is nice to see someone in the house that is not infested with the nargles. It seems that they are quite common here."

From across the room, one of the other female Ravenclaw students calls out. "Don't pay any mind to Looney Lovegood. None of us can figure out how she got sorted in here, daft as she is."

Harry looks shocked. Alice turns to see who spoke, but without knowing people by voice it is all but impossible to discover without asking somebody. Luna seems to have ignored the entire incident.

"Miss Lovegood, forgive my curiosity, but what is a 'nargle' and what does it have to do with some other students being rude?"

Luna looks unconcerned, but smiles as she responds. "Nargles are a magical creature. They are fairly small and are known to exist largely behind a quite powerful notice-me-not. They are known to steal things from people. My butter beer cork necklace keeps them from me directly, but sadly they still make off with items from my trunk regularly. I suspect that this infestation is what attracts the wrackspurts that have all of my housemates so... distracted all the time. In truth, I hope to fix the infestation as soon as possible. I don't mind so much the quills, ink and parchment. But I have been missing a shoe for a few days now and the floors of the castle grow colder as the nights go on. It is also not fun to be forced to keep all my assignments in a bag with me all the time so they are not taken. I can't believe the Headmaster has allowed such an infestation to fester for so long that it got this bad. But enough of my problems, you two do not stay here in the Ravenclaw tower. How are you enjoying your own quarters?"

Over the course of the next hour, Alice decides two things. First, Luna could well be the kindest, most thoughtful and considerate person it had ever been her pleasure to meet, with an imagination that was unstoppable and a knowledge of magizoology that was unprecedented in one so young, even though some of the things she spoke of Alice wasn't sure if the truly existed, strictly speaking.

Second, one or more of her housemates had targeted the young girl for systematic abuse that was about to stop.

HaA

Authors note.

OK, I lied. Halloween will be awhile. While a short chapter, this is still too much and with too many items in it to add to it much more without things going off the deep end a bit. Will probably do a bit of a time skip to Halloween in the next chapter. Maybe. We'll see.

Yeah... Nothing against any of the houses in particular, but when your head of house responds to pleas for assistance with "Sorry, just can't be bothered." which is basically what McGonagall does every time Malfoy opens his damn mouth, I can see a need to get out from under her thumb.

Besides. Writing dialog between Alice and Luna down the road is going to be awesome enough to make me do this even if it made no sense at all. Fortunately, justification wasn't difficult.

Lastly, I am guessing that somebody will mention that in a castle that size there should be dozens, if not hundreds of bugs dying every second. While normally that would be true, I am taking some creative liberty with the definition that the wards care about, giving a minimum size being on par with a mid sized spider or beetle. Additionally, I am assuming that at least some pest control happens when the house elves do their cleaning.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Board to the head.

When it finally does come, it can't really be said that Albus was ready for it. A rainy Tuesday at the end of October leads to an evening meeting of the school board that he has been asked, rather forcefully, to attend.

Walking into the rented room in the Three Broomsticks pub he is greeted by not only the ten members of the current Hogwarts school board, but also Amelia Bones, Sirius Black, and both Harry Potter and that insufferable little bint that he has been cozy with since June.

The last five months have been one disaster for him after another, starting with Potter going missing, and Gringotts losing it's mind over a little bit of mail forwarding. Then all of the carefully built political and personal secrets of the last twenty years getting put on display for the world to see.

He might have been able to gloss over much of this had not Barty Crouch proven to be such a whiny little shit about things. At the first hint that he had been found out, he rolled over and told them everything. Then he did it again under veritaserum and in front of the entire Wizengamot. Needless to say that it is difficult to hide complicity with vague answers when those asking the questions already know all the details.

One thing led to another, and then when he should have finally begun to get some control of the situation due to Harry Potter once again being under his thumb and in the school, it turns out that the little shite not only recognized what being the heir of Gryffindor and Slytherin meant, but he was more than happy to use and abuse the power it gave him. Albus' mind once again for the thousandth time since the start of September cringes at the thought of this veritable clone of Tom Riddle being in control of the wards for the school. The only thing that makes Albus not simply make an effort to kill the child outright is the fact that he has driven the Death Eaters from the school. So while Harry Potter may be beginning his walk down a dark path, he can't be possessed by Riddle. There is just no way that Riddle would be willing to weaken his position by destroying two of the last people he could realistically consider to be loyal followers.

Of course, he isn't the only one that has been getting the proverbial beat down. McGonagall has lost her position as Head of House Gryffindor to Babbling, of all people. Apparently having the last of the Potter's choose to be resorted caused the school board a collective panic that the rumor he might actually leave Hogwarts and study abroad had some claim to reality. Even Flitwick is no longer in as good of cheer as he might have once been. During the first week of October, nearly half the students in his house started to spontaneously grow purple birthmarks in the form of words that start high on their foreheads and began to cover their faces. THIEF, BULLY, CHEAT, PLAGIARIST, and BLACKMAILER are now scrawled on their faces in the ink of their own soul. Encouraged, Albus believes, by the school wards and keyed off of charms that Filius found on a first years trunk and school robes. The problem will eventually go away when they spend enough time outside the school, but until then fixing the problem is worthless. The wards will reapply the curse nearly as quickly s it is removed. When the diminutive charms professor had cornered Harry in exasperation in his efforts to get this removed, he was told that everyone will get a clean slate at Christmas, and that punishments next semester would be more severe.

Apparently after considering things and once again looking at the charms on young Luna with an eye to how they functioned and what they did rather than how to get rid of them, he decided that his Goblin honor could live with such a thing and left it alone.

At first Dumbledore wasn't certain why they were meeting at the Three Broomsticks. Then he remembered that three members of the school board were supposedly Ex-Death Eaters that had bought their way out of Azkaban shortly after Potter's parents were murdered. The concept that Lucius, who has been trying to get the post of Headmaster for the last ten years will now have no ability to do so does make him smile softly behind his expanse of white facial hair. As Albus walks in the door Malfoy can't help but let his smirk widen and the honeyed sarcasm fairly drips off of his tongue.

"Headmaster Dumbledore. So good of you to come to this meeting of the school board. I might have thought that you would be more inclined to be early, given the circumstances. Particularly considering the owners are also here."

Albus offers the disagreeable man the slightest of nods.

"Lucius. Pardon for believing that being on time might be sufficient. I do have a job to do, after all."

'Not for long,' Malfoy thinks as he looks around the table and sees that even the light members of the board that would have laid down their lives for the man a year ago all want him gone.

"If I could have everyone's attention. This meeting of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry board of governors is called to order. The first business to attend to is the scheduled vote of no confidence towards our current Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore. I could wax poetic for days as to the reasons it has come to my attention he needs to go, but rather than bother with things that might be debatable, shall we say, I want to point out the two that, by themselves, demand this action. First, he willingly and with malice influenced the line of Potter by the use of mail redirection. Second, due to this action he has drug the good name of Hogwarts through the mud so badly that Gringotts will no longer deal with our school while he remains at its head. I submit to you that it is less that we should get rid of the man, and more that we must. In spite of all the vitriol I could spew, all the irritation the man causes me, I will be the first to admit that he is powerful, brilliant, and formidable in many ways. But sadly, in light of his willingness to manipulate and steal from a noble house as well as stir up trouble with another sovereign nation, he has got to go. All in favor?"

Albus' eyes widen at this.

"Am I to be allowed no opportunity to defend myself?"

If the smile that Lucius tosses his way could be collected and bottled it could be used to clean gum off of pews, it is so toxic.

"Of course, Albus. Pull out your wand and swear a vow on your life and magic that nothing I have said is true. Any bit of it will see you sacked. If you can survive such a vow, I think we will have no choice but to allow you to stay."

"I would rather explain the circumstances in my own way, Lucius. Many of the things you are alluding to are not as damning as you seem to believe when the full story is known."

Lucius can't help but laugh.

"I know you would. But the board decided this before you arrived. The vow, now, or leave and clean out your office."

Albus looks over to Harry and Amelia in desperation. Madam Bones is the one to respond to that look.

"The vow was my idea, Headmaster Dumbledore. I wish I could say that I feel some small amount of pity for your plight now, but really all I can manage is to not vomit into my own throat that you have behaved so despicably that you have forced me to agree with Malfoy here." She turns to the pale haired man in question. "No offense, Lord Malfoy. But it isn't as though we generally see eye to eye."

Malfoy offers a slightly less enthusiastic smile.

"Little taken. So, Albus. What is it going to be?"

The silence stretches on for seemingly forever, but really was likely only a minute or two. Lucius finally smacks his little hammer on the table.

"I call for the vote. I am taking his silence as a denial."

To say that the vote was not in his favor is something of an understatement.

After the old man has been ushered out of the room, Augusta Longbottom takes the lead, the formidable old woman and her stuffed vulture hat bobbing as she nods.

"We now need a new head. Does anybody aside from myself want the job? It might have gone straight to Minerva, but with her recent difficulties that seems to be a bad idea."

Lucius raises a finger, looking at Harry and Alice for the first time that evening. Amelia and Sirius are less than impressed, going by their expressions.

"I would be interested, and I feel that I could bring much to the school. But I would first need to work out some kind of deal with the owner concerning the wards. During the last wizarding conflict I spent quite some time under the Imperius Curse, and during that time I was unfortunately fitted with a dark mark of my own. Since there appears to be no way to remove the mark, and as I have been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Wizengamot, I would need the wards changed to accommodate me."

Harry and Alice look at each other. Harry is the one that speaks up.

"Sure, if you offer us a magical vow that you have never and will never while in your right, non-controlled mind, serve the half blood bastard Tom Riddle also known as Voldemort, we can see clear to making an exemption for you."

Malfoy reddens, the test to oust Dumbledore being thrown in his face was apparently not what he was expecting. His voice is level when he responds to it however. A dash of condescension does creep in, a pinch of that tone that adults use when explaining something to a particularly dense child.

"Unlike the former Headmaster, I was actually cleared of any wrongdoing. Vows being the finicky things that they are, I would prefer not to make one when there is sufficient record to exonerate me without the use of one."

Alice doesn't even bother to look at him when she responds.

"We have, currently, two applicants. Both seem to be qualified or I would assume that the other board members would let us know. One has a dark mark that requires their soul to be damaged to attain. Before Harry or I would bother considering fiddling with the wards for you such a vow would have to be made, for without it you are by definition second best. Of course, the board is welcome to vote in whom they wish. But without that vow you will be doing the job by mail."

Sirius turns to Harry.

"Why don't you just disband the board anyway, it isn't like they have been doing their jobs. Damn Cerberus in the school."

Harry shakes his head as the members of the board wince.

"Why would I want to run this train wreck? I barely want to be here at all, given all the crap I've dealt with between my first year and Dumbles. Besides, I don't think I can actually disband the board. I can make them move the school somewhere else I suppose, but the school itself is actually run by the ministry. I am really not much more than a landlord."

The board are listening in and there are a few people who are positively beaming at Harry's admission that he doesn't run the school. Alice feels the need to step on their metaphorical necks a little before they get too excited.

"A landlord with complete control of the grounds, wards, surrounding countryside for a good few miles, and between yourself and Sirius ownership of fifty six percent of the Daily Prophet. They forget these tidbits to their own peril, Harry. Though please, let me know when you reach the point of not wishing to be here. I would rather study abroad anyway. We can even pay for your friends to come as well."

Augusta Longbottom bangs her gavel for attention once. Her voice is a bit annoyed, but there is a sarcastic wit that peeks out from behind the irritation.

"Lord and Lady Potter, I haven't even technically gotten the job yet. Do me the courtesy of giving me a chance to sort things a bit before you assume I will fail, if you please. Other than Lord Malfoy, who will apparently not be getting the assignment for... personal reasons, is anybody else interested in the job?"

As the only other ones that seem to be interested are apparently in the same boat as Malfoy, her appointment goes through. As soon as it does so, Harry tosses her a parchment. After giving it a glance, she turns to Harry.

"Lord Potter, what is this?"

Harry turns to Amelia.

"This is what Madam Bones, Lord Black, Alice, and I cobbled together as a few more rules and bylaws that we will be enforcing effective immediately."

Amelia pulls out her own copy and begins reading the important bits aloud for the members of the board that do not have one.

"First, all students and staff will submit to a full medical examination at the beginning of every semester, and all student and faculty property will be gone over by curse breakers from Gringotts. If anything is found that would compromise the loyalty or safety of the student population, such as a dark mark, possession, magical mirror that ensnares the soul, or giant freaking three headed dogs, they will be asked to give up their allegiance or items, otherwise they will be forced to leave the property."

"Second, the ministry will be encouraged to have an auror presence on the castle grounds whenever they desire to, and will be asked to supply security for the above examinations. If there is anything untoward discovered, such as students that are being abused, starved, or forced to take magical vows that the ministry deems to be at odds with the magical community as a whole, the aurors on site will be asked to deal with the issue."

Bones takes a drink of her Butter Beer and continues.

"Third, the school board will be wholly responsible for the hiring, firing, and offering contracts up to and including tenure to any teachers or other faculty."

Harry breaks in at this point.

"That said, if you send me people that are either unable or unwilling to do their jobs, I am not above banning them from the grounds. On a related note, Albus made some really poor choices in the staff. It would be a really good idea if you sorted out some of these clowns."

Sirius apparently has a coughing fit that happens to sound a lot like "Lockhart."

Amelia gives him an eyeball, and Harry waves her on.

"Fourth. During the winter and summer breaks the castle will be gone over by a team from Gringotts in an effort to get a handle eventually on what exactly is going on with the castle."

Amelia continues in her own words.

"That one was actually mine, so you can all stop looking at Harry. That castle is structurally sound, but it has a thousand years of enchantments from some of the strongest Wizards and Witches that have ever lived and innumerable children of all ages cluttering it up. It needs to be given a thorough cleaning and we need to find out what is there, what can stay, and what can go. For crying out loud, we haven't managed to keep a defense professor for a full year since the sixties, can anyone deny that such a thing is long overdue?"

Malfoy seems calm, but his voice carries more than a bit of an edge.

"Why Gringotts for all of this? Why not use the ministry's own personnel?"

Amelia cocks her head to one side, trying to determine if Malfoy is taking the piss. Apparently deciding that he is on the level for now, she responds.

"The ministry will be welcome to oversee the operation if the Minister would like to send somebody along, but the owner has a good relationship with Gringotts and as a neutral third party that is unaffiliated with the struggle between the houses, they are less likely to be bought by either the light or the dark within the Wizengamot."

Harry breaks in again.

"For what it's worth Lord Malfoy, I despise Dumbledore and his interpretation of the light at least as much as I do that dark mark on your arm. With my wife by my side here, we are pretty much prepared to be arseholes to everybody and let the pieces fall where they may."

Malfoy grunts in acceptance, though Alice believes that he is still hiding something. Amelia continues.

"There are a bunch of smaller additions that I won't go into for each of the above, but the last one that would concern the board is number five."

"Acts of a malicious nature that damage persons or property on school grounds will be dealt with by the department of magical law enforcement." She turns to the board members. "Now, I don't expect to get called out for every practical joke or errant bludger. But when there is legitimate malicious intent my department will be informed as soon as possible or when I do find out, heads will roll. We had a damned mountain troll in the castle last year, wrecked a bathroom and nearly killed three students. I found out about in eight months later. If anything like that happens again and the DMLE isn't informed immediately, somebody is going to be warming a cot in Azkaban for negligence that resulted in the near death of a minor. That carries a six month stay even if nobody gets hurt and I will damn well make it stick."

Augusta offers a nod, deciding that really, none of these requirements are unreasonable. In fact, most of them she might have thought were already standard.

With that, Harry and Alice take their leave with Sirius and head back to school. The next few weeks should be fairly interesting.

Author's Note.

I know, I know. I took a really long break. I did some writing and posted on another site for awhile. Might repost here if I start feeling like upping my numbers. :P

I know that this chapter is basically a time skip followed by a bunch of dialog, but it gets me to Thanksgiving for the next chapter, whenever that comes out.

Also, this story is about to leave canon so far behind as to be basically unrecognizable. Just so you know. About the only similarities left is that there will be a basilisk, probably a tri-wizard tournament, and horcruxes are a thing. Outside that... Yeah. Not a lot.


End file.
